Strange rendering of one letter in on-line PDF reader

Filip Blazek
Filip Blazek Posts: 14
edited October 2015 in Type Design Software
Hello,
My client, an advertising office, designs a magazine for on-line previewing based on PDF. Unfortunately, one single letter of the font is rendered with a strange shape around the letter. Accented letters A are affected (single A is fine). The letters look OK in InDesign as well as in Acrobat.

I did everything I could to avoid this problem: I changed direction of curves, I added a few redundant nodes, I did place the shape of Á to another glyph position. The Á is still rendered with the black shape.

Any idea what could be a source of this strange behaviour?




Thanks,
Filip


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Comments

  • Jason Campbell
    Jason Campbell Posts: 100
    open contours?
  • Filip Blazek
    Filip Blazek Posts: 14
    No. I tried to export the font from Glyphs, FL Mac, FL Win, still the same issue. Maybe it is a bug of the rendering software but all other glyphs are rendered properly. And as I mentioned, the bug is only related to the online previewing tool.
  • Malcolm Wooden
    Malcolm Wooden Posts: 58
    Contour direction or double contours?

    Are you hinting with an old version of ttfautohint? (current version is 1.4)
  • Filip Blazek
    Filip Blazek Posts: 14
    I double checked directions and double contours... I will try to check the hinting, I used the default setting so far. Thanks.
  • Erwin Denissen
    Erwin Denissen Posts: 302
    It might be a hinting issue, but on the other hand it could also be an incorrect OpenType layout feature. If you need help, do let me know and I'll look into it.
  • Jan Willem Wennekes
    Jan Willem Wennekes Posts: 148
    Have you tried rendering the same type in a different piece of software that can also export to PDF? Sometimes PDF can be really weird, and rendering isn't always a problem in the font itself.
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,227
    Sometimes PDF can be really weird, and rendering isn't always a problem in the font itself.

    Yes. Get a description of the PDF creation workflow from the client.
  • Michael Jarboe
    Michael Jarboe Posts: 265
    Sometimes PDF can be really weird, and rendering isn't always a problem in the font itself.

    I've noticed this, ever get /I or /l stem thickness rendering really wide/bold, with all other characters rendering correctly?

  • Mark Simonson
    Mark Simonson Posts: 1,739
    edited October 2015
    That's a known thing. It happens in Acrobat when type has been converted to outlines. Rectangular glyphs get heavier. It's a side effect of a rendering trick designed to boost the visibility of thin lines. Fonts are not affected unless they are converted to simple (unhinted) vector shapes.

    More here: 
  • Stephen Coles
    Stephen Coles Posts: 1,008

    @HoeflerCo @Acrobat Go to Acrobat > Preferences > Page Display > and uncheck "Enchance thin lines" under Rendering. Solves the problem!

    — Megan Anderson (@Megan_Anderson3) August 30, 2015
  • Jan Willem Wennekes
    Jan Willem Wennekes Posts: 148
    Dang, that's useful to know Stephen, thanks!

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