Academics using Edge?

Originally Posted by emen

There is a thing with rendering of certain pdf files that are converted from a doc(x) or a htm(l) file with Times New Roman fonts. These files are unreadable, since half of the sentence is displayed in some strange gray, and small, hardly visible fonts. I have a bunch of these articles, so I have to convert them to Epub. However, Epub is great, but only for books/articles written in English.

Aha! I've been completely flummoxed by this very problem. I have all my students turn their papers in in .pdf format, but I always get this result. Makes the papers very hard to read, thus reducing the effeciency of my grading. I should say, however, that this must be an edge problem, not an Adobe problem, since Acrobat reads the same files just fine...meaning, that there is no strange font conversion in Acrobat.

Originally Posted by EGC7

Aha! I've been completely flummoxed by this very problem. I have all my students turn their papers in in .pdf format, but I always get this result. Makes the papers very hard to read, thus reducing the effeciency of my grading. I should say, however, that this must be an edge problem, not an Adobe problem, since Acrobat reads the same files just fine...meaning, that there is no strange font conversion in Acrobat.

Have you tried reading them on another ereader that uses eink, such as Kindle or Nook? I doubt it's an Edge problem (that makes no sense to me), but I'm thinking it might be an eink problem.

EDIT: Ok, well, it doesn't appear to be an eink problem, as I just created a PDF using Times New Roman from a docx file (I can't remember if I wrote the doc in Word 2007 or 2010 though) and downloaded it to my Kindle, and it displayed just fine. I don't understand how that could be an Edge problem, but apparently, it is. very strange, it seems to me. Don't have my Edge yet to try it on, so I can't comment on that.

Originally Posted by EGC7

Aha! I've been completely flummoxed by this very problem. I have all my students turn their papers in in .pdf format, but I always get this result. Makes the papers very hard to read, thus reducing the effeciency of my grading. I should say, however, that this must be an edge problem, not an Adobe problem, since Acrobat reads the same files just fine...meaning, that there is no strange font conversion in Acrobat.

Well, you can convert them to Epub, using Calibre, or you could ask your students to use Arial.

Originally Posted by jsfiller

Have you tried reading them on another ereader that uses eink, such as Kindle or Nook? I doubt it's an Edge problem (that makes no sense to me), but I'm thinking it might be an eink problem.

EDIT: Ok, well, it doesn't appear to be an eink problem, as I just created a PDF using Times New Roman from a docx file (I can't remember if I wrote the doc in Word 2007 or 2010 though) and downloaded it to my Kindle, and it displayed just fine. I don't understand how that could be an Edge problem, but apparently, it is. very strange, it seems to me. Don't have my Edge yet to try it on, so I can't comment on that.

I read somewhere the Edge uses Adobe software on the e-ink side. Like I said, my 6“ reader displays these doc-to-pdf files exactly like my Edge, so I suppose the problem is not Edge related.

Originally Posted by emen

I read somewhere the Edge uses Adobe software on the e-ink side. Like I said, my 6“ reader displays these doc-to-pdf files exactly like my Edge, so I suppose the problem is not Edge related.

You're correct that the eDGe uses Adobe software - you'll see the copyright notice on the reader splash screen during boot-up.

PDFs can use native fonts or embedded fonts, so perhaps the eDGe is missing or mismapping some fonts. You can contact Tech Support for some feedback on this problem. Meanwhile, you can also try generating the PDF, specifying "embed fonts", which is supposed to copy the font into the PDF so that it renders faithfully on the client screen.

Originally Posted by emen

There is a thing with rendering of certain pdf files that are converted from a doc(x) or a htm(l) file with Times New Roman fonts. These files are unreadable, since half of the sentence is displayed in some strange gray, and small, hardly visible fonts. I have a bunch of these articles, so I have to convert them to Epub. However, Epub is great, but only for books/articles written in English.

Originally Posted by EGC7

Aha! I've been completely flummoxed by this very problem. I have all my students turn their papers in in .pdf format, but I always get this result. Makes the papers very hard to read, thus reducing the effeciency of my grading. I should say, however, that this must be an edge problem, not an Adobe problem, since Acrobat reads the same files just fine...meaning, that there is no strange font conversion in Acrobat.

The problem IS Microsoft's Office PDF conversion. (Having used MS products for over 20 years, I'm no longer surprised at the brain-dead things they do. I'm only surprised why people keep hanging on to it as a supposed "standard" or consider it "professional".)

Starting with a Word Document containing several pages of text in Times New Roman font I ran the following tests and opened each of the PDF files on the eDGe:

MS Office saving directly to PD results in the totally lame, krappy PDF display on the eDGe.

MS Office using a PDF printer to print to a PDF file works fine on the eDGe.

Open Office on Windows saving directly to a PDF file works fine on the eDGe.

Open Office on Linux saving directly to a PDF file works fine on the eDGe.

Open Office on Windows using a PDF Printer to print to a PDF file works fine on the eDGe.

Open Office on Linux outputting a PS file, converting to PDF with ps2pdf utility works fine on the eDGe.


The smallest files are the ones from MS Office saving to PDF and from the PDF Printer (all about 7K). All the other files check in at roughly 25K. The smaller files do not embed the font.

The references I can find in these smaller PDF files describing the font and encoding show the Microsoft PDF file uses: . . . /BaseFont/Times#20New#20Roman/Encoding/WinAnsiEncoding . . . and the PDF Printer files use: . . . /BaseFont/Times-Roman/Type/Font/Encoding 13 0 R/Subtype/Type1. . . It seems to me the PDF printers output standard font names and the MS version of PDF is intended for use on Windows-centric systems. So the edge's minimal, embedded Adobe PDF reader displays the MS PDF ugly.

Another lesson in avoiding special features in Microsoft Office.

The issue of fonts in PDFs has perhaps gone off topic for the thread, but it's an important issue, so I've started a new thread that summarizes and continues the discussion here: http://www.entourageedge.com/forums/...-good-results).