PRS-900 ADE and 900 and Acrobat Reader show same PDF differently

Has any one ever come across this weird situation, see attached image. On the left is the PDF as displayed in Acrobat Reader 9.3.2 and on the right is the same PDF as displayed in both ADE 1.7.2.1131 and on my 900. As you can see ADE and the 900 render a perfectly good PDF into an unreadable document. I've never seen this before as ADE usually does a fair job with PDFs. Any ideas about how to fix the file? I do not own any PDF editing software like the full Acrobat, nor will I buy one as they are too expensive and I would rarely use them. I'm not going to try to convert a 10mb PDF into another format because it will come out horribly formatted. And no, I'm not going to use calibre to convert it as calibre does the worst job converting PDFs. There must be something strange in this PDF file but I cannot find what it is and like I said it isn't worth spending hours and hours converting and reformatting it.

BTW, this page is better than most. Most of the text has been changed to the very light sans serif font and the color seems to be gray rather than black. It is difficult to read in ADE, and nearly impossible to read on the 900.

...

Followup, ADE in the Show Information window said the document contained minor errors which might make it display incorrectly. I was able to solve the issues by downloading the trial version of Acrobat Pro 9, used its diagnostics to correct any errors, and saved the file. I still have no clue as to what was causing the issues, though I suspect it was font related. But it is beyond me to explain why two products written by the same darn company could not display the same PDF in the same way. And this company also designed the PDF file format!

[vxf]

Yes, I get that problem every time the PDF is created from a Word document using Times New Roman font.

The only solution I know of is changing font.

I posted about it a while ago:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=87364

I am not sure if I described my problem accurately. I am not even sure it is a Times New Roman problem - although, I get a lot of word files from students and, if they are times new roman, that does ALWAYS happen. If I change fonts, the problem goes away.

[vxf]

A file that is publicly available with the same issues:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.c...act_id=1214382

I don't know which program was used to create the PDF file, but I suspect it was MS Word. I was lucky in that the creator of the PDF had left it non-DRMed so I was able to use Adobe Acrobat Pro to fix the problem, though I don't really know what the problem was.

I'm no fan of PDF. Acrobat Pro does not allow you to select all the text in an entire document and change the font size. As a matter of fact, Acrobat Pro, which costs $500+, has very little editing capability. Like most Adobe programs it is overpriced and underfeatured. Converting a PDF to Word or another usable format is a lot of work because PDF files don't work the same as a DOC, RTF, HTML, ePub, etc. file when it comes to text flow. PDF files instead use text boxes and break up the text flow into a multitude of small chunks. It is a terrrible publishing system that was designed to reproduce a document in a specific size. It was never designed for reflow. In my opinion the time of PDFs has long since come and gone and this archaic system needs to be replaced or retired.

[simplyparticular]

From your avatar, I take it you're not a big fan of Apple. But I take PDFs, open them in Apple's Preview, and then select all, and copy the text into Sigil (free epub editor), and save as ePub. 8 times out of ten, I get a very readable document on either my Sony or nook.

[vxf]

Jswinden, do you mind giving some directions on how you fixed the file? I do have access to Adobe Acrobat Pro at work - and I have plenty of files that could use a simple fix. Did you end up changing the font?

Thanks.

And, in regards to PDFs, I share your feelings. PDFs are nothing but an aggravation... but we have to live with them, probably for quite a while... there's so much content out there that is only available in PDF.

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by vxf

Jswinden, do you mind giving some directions on how you fixed the file? I do have access to Adobe Acrobat Pro at work - and I have plenty of files that could use a simple fix. Did you end up changing the font?

Thanks.

And, in regards to PDFs, I share your feelings. PDFs are nothing but an aggravation... but we have to live with them, probably for quite a while... there's so much content out there that is only available in PDF.

When it comes to making my own ebooks I prefer PDF. I find it the best choice for my ereader because it provides me with a level of format control that I haven't found with other formats. For example, with RTF I've been unable to consistenly display an intended font type.

However, I strongly agree that PDF doesn't work well when the document is not formatted for your ereader's screen size. With PDFs of that type I don't bother even trying to read them on my ereader.

I don't fault PDF for its limitations since its purpose is to render a document exactly as intended by the creator. This is something that other formats are not as good at (and a reason for PDF's creation).