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strange boxes showing up in PDF print and normal printing

Hello-

Wondering if anyone is having this issue after the good old El Capitan upgrade. When using Pages, and opening previously created documents OR newly created documents, when I print them as PDFs or print them in my normal printer, black square boxes are showing up throughout every document.

The black boxes show up wherever there is a paragraph break. If I use a line break everywhere (shift+enter), the black boxes do not appear when printed. But everywhere the normal paragraph break (enter) is used, these dang boxes show up. It appears that the PDFs are being written or saved in an odd manner. Most of the boxes in question are being written to a different "layer" and I've tried opening the PDFs in Adobe Acrobat Pro and I am able to remove the squares. In most cases, they are included on a separate layer than the original text, and when removing within them Acrobat the document appears correct.

I am completely hampered here, and cannot create PDFs which I used every day, and cannot print anything out on paper from within Pages with these boxes.

I am using Font Agent Pro and have been back-and-forth with their technical support. They cannot recreate this error on their end, and say it doesn't have anything to do with the font manager. They have been a great help, but are completely baffled.

I have tried using multiple different fonts, system and non-system fonts. I have tried creating new documents vs using previously created documents. I have tried even saving as PDF again with the originally created PDF. I've tried copying content from previous docs into new docs and it still happens. Nothing works and I cannot get rid of these boxes.

I have tried using the previous version of Pages 4.3 to test it out, and this older version works fine and does NOT produce these boxes, it works fine. But most of my documents have been upgraded long ago to the latest version of Pages. Another strange thing is that it is happening on both of my two different computers after the El Capitan bombshell upgrade. Mac Pro (early 2009) and Mac Pro Retina (mid 2012).

Help!!! Anyone having this issue, or just me? I've included a screenshot of the boxes from a PDF created from Pages.

Thank you for any insight, much appreciated.

Mac Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11)

Posted on Oct 15, 2015 3:26 PM

53 replies

Jan 12, 2016 11:25 AM in response to patrickfromsanta barbara

Try fixing your old font using FontDoctor which is now bundled with Suitcase Fusion.

Or use FontXChange which I use to change fonts to the .otf fonts that work best with OSX and are cross platform.

Peter

Jan 15, 2016 8:14 AM in response to PeterBreis0807

I bought FontXChange, and it didn't fix my Avant Garde font -- the resulting font's name was "(null)" and it didn't contain screen images.

Jan 15, 2016 4:08 PM in response to patrickfromsanta barbara

What did you convert the file format to?

Normally FontXChange will report errors or faulty fonts.

Peter

Jan 15, 2016 5:07 PM in response to PeterBreis0807

I converted it to postscript. I guess I can try other types. Any recommendation?

thanks!

Jan 15, 2016 6:07 PM in response to patrickfromsanta barbara

Go to .otf (Open Type Format) which is the universal type format now. Postscript Type 1 is so '90s, not Unicode for a start.🙂

Peter

Feb 5, 2016 2:05 PM in response to Viswanath Tumu

I have this problem, too, but I found a solution, or let's say a workaround: You have to fix the fonts of the Apple Font Pack.

According to Font Book, these fonts all have an issue with the name table structure. Font Book of El Capitan says so, and also Font Book of Yosemite. But apparently up to Yosemite this never was a problem. The way I found to fix this is not exactly easy, but this is what I did:

You have to install FontForge, a free font editor that uses X11 on the Mac.

- Make sure you have the latest version of XQuartz for El Capitan (v2.7.8). If not, install it from http://www.xquartz.org/

- Install FontForge from https://github.com/fontforge/fontforge/releases . I used the version from April 2015, since this was the last one that came with a Mac DMG image.

- Copy the fonts that do not work into a folder for easy access.

- Start FontForge.

- Open one of the font suitcases ("File" - "Open", set the filter to "All Files"). You can then select one of the containing fonts (if there are more than one).

- Select the first of the fonts.

- Don't change anything in the font.

- Select "File" - "Generate Fonts...". Select "TrueType" in the dialog, press "Generate". There will be a warning that says "Errors detected". Ignor it and press "Generate" again. A TrueType font that can replace the old font will be generated.

- Repeat this for all fonts in all suitcases you want to fix.

- Select all these newly generated fonts and double click them. Font Book will show them and you can install them family by family. Font Book will say, these are duplicate fonts, but install them anyway.

- Look for the little warning signs and just deactivate the old versions. Use command-I or click on the information button in the window to look for the file name in order to be sure which version to deactivate.

- Clear the font caches: Open the Terminal app, type "sudo atsutil databases -remove", press return, enter your password.

- Reboot.

After I did this, everything went back to normal. I have a huge collection of documents written in Apple Garamond, Bookman or Avant Garde, and they display properly in Finder preview and in print again.

Before that, Preview couldn't even print old PDFs I generated before installing El Capitan. Acrobat Reader could, by the way.

Hope this helps.

Dirk

Feb 5, 2016 2:19 PM in response to Beamerboy

You can fix the fonts yourself: See my suggestion at Re: Re: strange boxes showing up in PDF print and normal printing

Feb 5, 2016 3:35 PM in response to Poodle Bites

Thanks. I'll check your method out...

Feb 6, 2016 3:42 PM in response to Poodle Bites

I tried downloading font forge and following your directions. I think I got it sort of sorted out, but not totally. Is there any chance that would email me your "repaired" apple fonts? (Not sure how to do that: I don't see any way to contact you directly.) Thanks for the help!

Feb 7, 2016 10:15 AM in response to patrickfromsanta barbara

Well, I don't think this would be legal... What do you mean, "not totally"?

Feb 7, 2016 11:15 AM in response to Poodle Bites

The particular font that I need to fix is Avant Garde. I was able to get the "book" version to work but the "demi" version still results in blank boxes when I print PDF's. I know nothing about fonts and Font Forge isn't the most user friendly application for an uninformed user (like me) to stumble through. When trying to generate the new font, I get a "no glyph found" error message, which I presume to mean that the image that will be used in the PDF's that I ultimately create is missing, resulting in the blank boxes (instead of text). In Font Book, no errors or warnings crop up with the "demi" version, but I have problems with the resulting PDF's. I probably am missing something when using Font Forge, so I'll play around with it some more to see if I can get the font working right. Since the 'book' version is fine now, I assume (sooner or later) I'll get the 'demi' version fixed.

I don't understand why this issue cropped up with El Capitan, when things were fine under Yosemite and earlier.

Feb 8, 2016 9:03 AM in response to patrickfromsanta barbara

Can you post a screenshot of the converted font, shown in Font Book with the "Info" option? A similar picture like this one, where I marked the active and inactive versions of the font (sorry, this is a German system):

leslaas

Level 1

15 points

Feb 12, 2016 1:20 PM in response to jessefromtuolumne

Thank you Thank you Thank you!!! This solved my printing issue with my TurboTax

Feb 12, 2016 4:35 PM in response to jessefromtuolumne

Thank you so much for your suggestion to reset fonts back to standard.

After all the questions saying it would undo any new apps added in upgrades, I replied to still restore fonts. It worked all my pdf files that printed empty boxes are now printing any font.

fyi the word App and the word Applications can have different meanings to some people.

I did a search to find 'Font Book' and it was located in my Application list.

I appreciate you sharing your discovery.

Apr 20, 2016 10:43 PM in response to Magias

Thank you Magias!

Your solution helped me to stop having those empty boxes when I create PDF files from certain app!

strange boxes showing up in PDF print and normal printing