* PDF Formatting Weirdness... Whattup?

[edmacke]

I generated an "Ancestors By Generation" report. Everything looks fine (see screenshot #1).

When I "Save Report As..." a PDF using all default settings, the PDF version has randomly flubbed formatting. It's mostly OK, but some lines have just clearly gone off the rails (see screenshot #2).

Screenshot #1 - FH Ancsestors By Generation report

2018-07-08_12-01-19.jpg (147.54 KiB) Viewed 5563 times

Screenshot #2 - Mangled PDF Version

2018-07-08_12-00-31.jpg (209.59 KiB) Viewed 5563 times

[Jane]

Very strange I have not seen any problems with the PDF generator which look like that.

Might be worth uninstalling the Family Historian Nova PDF printer and reinstalling it.
See how_to:family_historian_installation_problems#save_as_pdf_file_output_is_not_enabled|> Save As PDF File Output is Not Enabled

[edmacke]

Thanks, Jane.

So I did some playing around, and here's what I found:

Nova PDF
Reinstalling the Nova PDF printer didn't help - I still get the garbled lines.

However, when I changed my report's font from Adobe Devanagari to Times Roman, that worked. The Nova PDF looked fine.

At first I thought it might be an issue with OpenType fonts, since Adobe Devanagari is OpenType and Times Roman is, of course, TrueType.

As an experiment, I tried other OpenType fonts like Adobe Garamond Pro and Adobe Arabic, and got the same mangling. So I thought it might be OpenType fonts that were the problem. But when I tried "Agency FB" and "Algerian" (both also OpenType), those PDFs looked fine.

So maybe it's just an issue with Nova PDF and Adobe OpenType fonts??? Or just Adobe fonts in general??

Microsoft Print to PDF
Just for comparison, I tried Printing the report (as opposed to Save Report As) to the "Microsoft Print to PDF" printer.

This just never worked at all. No matter what fonts, it would get to about page 63 (out of 67) and simply end. There was no error message, no indication anything went wrong, but there was no PDF generated.


Nitro Software's PrimoPDF
I installed Nitro software's free "Primo PDF" utility, and Printed the report to that printer.

That seemed to create perfect PDFs no matter what I threw at it.

So...
What to make of this? I don't know.

There seems to be some issue with Nova PDF and Adobe OpenType fonts. I can't say conclusively that's the problem - I didn't check every Adobe OpenType font I have, and I don't have any Adobe non-OpenType fonts. But every Adobe OpenType font I did test got mangled under Nova PDF, and worked fine under PrimoPDF. And every non-Adobe OpenType font I tried seemed to be problem-free.

So I guess the moral is either avoid Adobe OpenType fonts or use PrimoPDF???

[Jane]

It does sound like a font/nova issue, so as you say avoid Adobe fonts if you want to use Nova.

[tatewise]

I suggest you report the problem to Calico Pie with details of which fonts work and which do not.
See how_to:about#problem_reporting|> Problem Reporting.

I have updated how_to:report_tips_and_tricks#using_reports|> Using Reports to warn about this problem.

[edmacke]

I suggest you report the problem to Calico Pie with details of which fonts work and which do not.

Done

I have updated Knowledge Base > Using Reports to warn about this problem.

Thank you, sir!

One minor point, to use the Nitro PrimoPDF printer, you need to use Print > PrimoPDF (or similar) rather than Save Report As > PDF. That's not really called out in the article.

FYI, CutePDF - another popular PDF generator - works fine, as well.

[tatewise]

Thanks, I've updated the article to include that extra advice.