[MPMoriarty]

I recently created an 88 page document in TextEdit and chose to save it as a PDF from the print menu. The PDF opened perfectly in Preview and showed everything.

Now the problem...

Opened the same PDF on Windows XP using Adobe Acrobat 5.0 and everything was messed up:

- Only 37 out of the 88 pages showed any text. The rest were just graphics.
- The very last paragraph of text on page 37 was compressed into 1 line. How do I know this? I copied the line and pasted it in NotePad and it showed all of the text for that paragraph. But Acrobat decided to condense 8 lines of text into one.

I have heard of this happening before with PDFs created using the print dialog. But I don't remember the circumstances. Has anybody else had these problems?

Oh and I did use Tiger to create this PDF.

[Kristoff]

Uh, Acrobat 5.0? Can you say OLD?

Perhaps Tiger uses newer features of the spec that aren't supported by such an ancient version of Acrobat?

[MPMoriarty]

Well that is what is installed on our computers at work.

All the PDF is is just text and images. All the images showed up on the pages after page 37, but none of the text did.

[Mithras]

Yeah, Tiger supports PDF 1.5, which is Acrobat >=6. Might give that a try.

[Big Mac]

Anyone been able to confirm MPM's report on lack of backward compatibility with older versions of Acrobat? I rely on PDF creation for Windows associates on a daily basis, so this is a really important concern. On a similar note, could someone check to ensure compatibility between Tiger and Combine PDFs?

[Kristoff]

It's not really a concern. I mean, Acrobat 5.0 is freaking Ancient crap. A PDF generated on Acrobat 7.0 for Windows wont even work right, so it's not a Tiger specific issue per se.

[MPMoriarty]

All the PDF contains is text and graphics. Nothing fancy. And other PDFs created with Tiger that are less than 30 pages will open fine in Acrobat 5.0

It's the ones that are more than 30 pages that Acrobat chokes on. It will display the graphics exactly where they are supposed to on each page, but the text has been removed.

[CaptainHaddock]

It doesn't matter that it's just text and graphics. Tiger is still creating PDFs with a newer standard that Acrobat 5.0 can't handle properly. Even just text under Tiger has a lot of technical wizardry going on behind the scenes.

[Tee]

Yup!
Your description is exactly what I have been experiencing, right down to the garbled text before the page goes blank in Acrobat Reader.

This issue has been seriously pissing me off for about 2 years now.
It means that long PDF files created on OSX are not compatible with 'older' versions of Acrobat Reader.

It makes it impossible for users of OS9 to view long PDF that have been created on OS X (since the latest version available for OS9 is 5.x)

MPMoriarty, try doing the "Save as PDF" from within a Carbon app, like Tex-Edit Plus.
My tests have shown that the issue *might* be limited to Cocoa apps.

Here is my initial a thread on this:
http://forums.macnn.com/90/mac-os-x/197576/save-as-pdf-compatibility/

Oh, I did submit this to bugreporter.apple.com in April of 2004.
It has been classified as a "Serious Bug" and it's status is still "Open.'

We know that it affects Jaguar and Panther, were you using Tiger MPMoriarty?

[Big Mac]

Yeah, he states at the end of his first post that he's talking about Tiger.

[Tee]

Originally Posted by Big Mac

Yeah, he states at the end of his first post that he's talking about Tiger.

I missed that last line. Thanks Big Mac.

What a shame that Apple couldn't resolve this for Tiger...

[MPMoriarty]

While I realize that Acrobat 5.0 might be old, I am not an idiot when it comes to knowing the difference between software incompatibility and software bugs.

The fact that the PDF can open in Acrobat 5.0 is my first sign that the file is compatible. Secondly, the fact that it makes it up to page 37 and then chokes on text (not images; they still display perfectly fine throughout the entire PDF) tells me that OS X's PDF must do something funky that Acrobat doesn't like.

And third, making sure no PDF is above 35 pages allows each file to be opened and viewed accurately.

I'm sorry, but this really sounds like a glitch in OS X's PDF composing abilities.

I am going to make a bug report to Apple.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by MPMoriarty

The fact that the PDF can open in Acrobat 5.0 is my first sign that the file is compatible.

To my recollection, PDF is specifically designed so that older readers will be able to open up newer versions of the format � they just might not display correctly. It's stated right in the standard. So I don't think that's proof that the versions are compatible.

[Kristoff]

I hear that the PDP-11 can't open PDFs generated using Tiger either! OMG!

Really....get over it and upgrade the Acrobat reader already.