Converting Microsoft Word documents to PDF for the eDGe (with good results)

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.

Originally Posted by kenjennings

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 trick for good results with Word is to simply specify the "PDF/A Compatible" option when Saving As PDF (click the "Options" button).

Alternatively, CutePDF is a great (and free!) PDF printer driver.

Originally Posted by borisb

The trick for good results with Word is to simply specify the "PDF/A Compatible" option when Saving As PDF (click the "Options" button).

Alternatively, CutePDF is a great (and free!) PDF printer driver.

That does work. It appears to have embedded the font and includes a label that properly says "Times New Roman".

It doesn't do a great job at something. The resulting MS PDF file is 50K, twice the size of the previous largest file. The PDF printer output was only 7K. This is a small, two-page test.

PDF Printers are a good thing. They should come standard.