Q: Font problems after 10.6.7

Not in my InDesign. . . .
Command P has no PDF option.
The ONLY way I can get a PDF is Export.

Maybe mine is an older version of ID?

I'm using CS5, what version are you at?

Adobe did moves thing around in CS5. The print options even between Photoshop CS4 and CS5 are different.

Hi Kurt,
OK. I know what I need to do.

How could Apple ever allow an upgrade that is so flawed out of it’s quality control?

Something must be seriously wrong IMO, and it’s not just PDFs and OT.

So long for now, TOM

OK, Got it.
My version is earlier.

How could Apple ever allow an upgrade that is so flawed out of it’s quality control?

You can be sure it wasn't intentional. But sometimes big, should-be-obvious things get past multiple people.

Many years ago, one of my first jobs was running a small press. The guy next to me was just about ready to run the real stock through a 20" press on the job he had. I went over to see what he was working on "just because".

It was a job for the Minnesota Zoo's annual "Walk With the Animals" fund raiser. There were tickets, a flyer and a small poster all on one sheet. Very thing thing I noticed. The title on every component read "Walk the With Animals". In 2" high letters no less on the poster. I showed it to the other pressman and he shut the press down immediately after only using about 10 sheets of the job stock.

The plant manager came out to a bit later to thank me for catching it. He said at least 30 different people had looked at, and approved the design over the course of a couple weeks. It got by the zoo staff, the designer himself, the printing company's salesman, the prepress staff that stripped up the negs and made the plate for the press. And ultimately, even the guy running the press.

So anyway, when I see these kinds of things, it makes you shake your head in disbelief, but I've seen similar instances at least a dozen times.

dandeliondigital wrote:
How could Apple ever allow an upgrade that is so flawed out of it’s quality control?

That is one of the most difficult parts about this issue. The upgrade isn't flawed at all. Apple hasn't made any errors. They did not test with OpenType Postscript fonts in Acrobat. They probably did test lots of other things with Acrobat, but didn't use Postscript fonts.

People read all these postings here and on other web sites and come away thinking "Apple released a buggy 10.6.7". NO! They didn't! There isn't anything wrong with it. The bug is on Adobe's side. The problem is that the bug is 20 years old and cannot now be fixed. It is installed on a hundred million PCs and printers around the world and isn't ever going to be updated.

It is easy for armchair programmers to condemn Apple for failing to test this one case. They should have, but mistakes happen.

etresoft wrote:

dandeliondigital wrote:
How could Apple ever allow an upgrade that is so flawed out of it’s quality control?

People read all these postings here and on other web sites and come away thinking "Apple released a buggy 10.6.7". NO! They didn't! There isn't anything wrong with it. The bug is on Adobe's side. The problem is that the bug is 20 years old and cannot now be fixed. It is installed on a hundred million PCs and printers around the world and isn't ever going to be updated.

How can you be sure that the bug is on Adobe's side and that the bug is 20 years old? These fonts work fantastically well in a huge number of applications across multiple platforms and operating system versions, but not in OS 10.6.7.

Who ever was at fault 20 years ago, it is Apple that appears to be at fault now.

etresoft wrote:
The upgrade isn't flawed at all. Apple hasn't made any errors.

There isn't anything wrong with it. The bug is on Adobe's side.

When 10.6.7-produced pdfs cannot be opened on 10.6.6 it is difficult to argue that Adobe alone is to blame.

SS_MedPhoto wrote:
How can you be sure that the bug is on Adobe's side and that the bug is 20 years old?

Because I've inspected the files byte for byte.

These fonts work fantastically well in a huge number of applications across multiple platforms and operating system versions, but not in OS 10.6.7.

There isn't anything wrong with the fonts. The issue is how they are encoded inside the PDF. There isn't anything wrong with the way they are encoded inside the PDF. Adobe (any anyone who uses Adobe's code) doesn't expect them to be encoded in that particular (but perfectly valid) fashion.

Who ever was at fault 20 years ago, it is Apple that appears to be at fault now.

At fault? That part I disagree with. Adobe is at fault for pushing a "free and open" PDF specification and selling/giving away software for 20 years that does not comply with said specification.

I feel this is Apple's bug to fix, but only because Adobe isn't going to and people are going to blame Apple for it anyway. The burden is on Apple to revert their PDF software to the PDF standard implemented (although not documented) by Adobe.

etresoft wrote:
The upgrade isn't flawed at all. Apple hasn't made any errors. They did not test with OpenType Postscript fonts in Acrobat. They probably did test lots of other things with Acrobat, but didn't use Postscript fonts.

People read all these postings here and on other web sites and come away thinking "Apple released a buggy 10.6.7". NO! They didn't! There isn't anything wrong with it. The bug is on Adobe's side. The problem is that the bug is 20 years old and cannot now be fixed. It is installed on a hundred million PCs and printers around the world and isn't ever going to be updated.

Please show your evidence for these assertions. To which Adobe "bug" are you referring?

Please explain why products with no Adobe code in them at all now fail under 10.6.7 with OpenType PostScript fonts, when they worked under all previous versions of Mac OS. (For instance, Sibelius is not able to display scores correctly on the display screen if elements of the score are taken from OpenType PostScript fonts).

You do know that the 10.6.7 update also resulted in Postscript font rendering corruption in Flash files, right? This problem isn't exclusive to PDF creation or the PDF specification. This is about how OS X treats OT/PS fonts.

Here is a thread on the Adobe Flash forums regarding the issue:
http://forums.adobe.com/message/3574696

Uh-Oh. Now look what you’ve done.

Please don’t make Adobe any madder than they already are.

Got to be able to paint the exit door on that wall.

So long for now, TOM

PS: Apple appears to be turning away from their once truest bluest group of supporters. The graphic design community.

Hi Kurt,
I worked in a town in which the DuPont company was king, and one of the account execs had a poster on his wall that displayed a monumental misspelling of Freon. The type was in a 12” condensed font and it went to press, and that happened in America way before jobs were sent overseas.

Oh well.

So long for now, TOM

Thorzdad wrote:
You do know that the 10.6.7 update also resulted in Postscript font rendering corruption in Flash files, right? This problem isn't exclusive to PDF creation or the PDF specification. This is about how OS X treats OT/PS fonts.

Can you embed fonts in Flash files? If so, then that is likely the cause. It is more likely to be a memory corruption issue inside Flash. Whereas Acrobat Reader just crashes, Flash may keep running, but with corrupted memory.

I'm not a Flash developer so I can't do anything more than speculate on that. For the PDF files, I extracted the binary data representing the compressed, embedded font. The 10.6.7 data was compressed differently than in 10.6.6. The compression still seemed to be valid. Both sets of data decompressed to identical files. I verified this with checksums.

I'm not disagreeing with you, but it may be a data compression issue rather than a font rendering issue. On Windows, other PDF readers can open 10.6.7 PDF files so that leads me to suspect the problem to be with Adobe. There isn't any other Flash software.

dande --

Ah HAH!
Wilmington, eh?
Wonder which ad agency was responsible for that?
Glad it wasn't any of the agencies I worked for there, LOL.