[Le Flaneur]

I have a weird pdf problem. My bank generates bank statements as pdfs on the fly which I normally view in Safari. I can view these just fine on my MacBook Pro unibody (late 2008), but on my other MacBook Pro unibody (mid-2010), they appear as gibberish. Even if I download the files on the older MBP and transfer them to the newer MBP, they still appear as gibberish (in Preview or Safari). Both laptops run the same system software (10.6.5). The internet plug-ins are the same on both computers, and the problem isn't resolved on the newer MBP by disabling all internet plug-ins.

I can't figure out what might be wrong. Could some sort of font conflict be responsible?

[Cold Warrior]

Use Font Book to validate all fonts and also located duplicates. Disable your duplicates if it finds them.

[larkost]

My guess is that on one you have Adobe Reader set to view PDFs in the browser (the installer defaults to doing that), and on the other you have Safari using the system-wide PDF viewing framework.

Apple's framework is much faster, but there are all sorts of extensions that Adobe has been piling into their Reader, including a number in the area of encryption and "document rights management" that no-one else has implemented. In many of these cases it would actually be impossible/illegal for others to try and implement them (would require breaking the encryption to do so).

[Le Flaneur]

Originally Posted by larkost 

My guess is that on one you have Adobe Reader set to view PDFs in the browser (the installer defaults to doing that), and on the other you have Safari using the system-wide PDF viewing framework.

As I wrote above, the pdf appears the same whether I use Preview or Safari, and my Internet Plug-Ins folder is without the Adobe Plug-in.

[Oisín]

Originally Posted by Le Flaneur 

As I wrote above, the pdf appears the same whether I use Preview or Safari, and my Internet Plug-Ins folder is without the Adobe Plug-in.

Did you try following Cold Warrior’s advice? Your problem here sounds like an exact description of what happens when you have a corrupt font or font clashings.

What font do the PDFs from your bank use?

[P]

First try what CW said, but if that doesn't work, try installing Adobe Reader X, released to little fanfare a few weeks ago. It has worked much better than Reader 9 in my limited experience.

[Le Flaneur]

Originally Posted by Oisín 

Did you try following Cold Warrior’s advice? Your problem here sounds like an exact description of what happens when you have a corrupt font or font clashings.

I'm working on the conflicts. The reason why it isn't straightforward is Microsoft's fault As you probably know, Office 2008 and 11 install fonts that conflict with OS X system fonts -- and one has to look at them on a case-by-case basis to determine which is the newer and more complete font

What font do the PDFs from your bank use?

How can I tell? The beginning of a pdf statement looks like this:

%PDF-1.6
%‚„œ”
1 0 obj
<</Metadata 55 0 R/Pages 2 0 R/Type/Catalog>>
endobj
2 0 obj
<</Count 3/Type/Pages/Kids[48 0 R 38 0 R 6 0 R]>>
endobj
3 0 obj
<</CreationDate(D:20101202092034-06'00')/Producer(Systemware Content Server 1.3.13 PROD/SBCS 20101020)/ModDate(D:20101202092034-06'00')>>
endobj
6 0 obj
<</Parent 2 0 R/Contents 37 0 R/MediaBox[0 0 612 792]/Resources 7 0 R/Type/Page>>
endobj
7 0 obj
<</XObject<</FRM197511 29 0 R>>/Font<</FNT10 26 0 R/FNT14 23 0 R/FNT18 20 0 R/FNT22 17 0 R/FNT26 14 0 R/FNT4 11 0 R/FNT8 8 0 R>>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text]>>
endobj
8 0 obj
<</Subtype/Type1/FontDescriptor 9 0 R/LastChar 95/Widths[655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471 655.471]/BaseFont/PF0020-Roman/FirstChar 32/Type/Font>>
endobj
9 0 obj
<</StemV 88/FontName/PF0020-Roman/FontFile 10 0 R/Flags 4/Descent -236/FontBBox[-61 -229 672 934]/Ascent 764/CapHeight 970/Type/FontDescriptor/ItalicAngle 0>>
endobj
10 0 obj
<</Subtype/Type1/Length 24279/Filter/FlateDecode/Length1 5987/Length2 21632/Length3 550>>stream

[Oisín]

Originally Posted by Le Flaneur

How can I tell? The beginning of a pdf statement looks like this:

I just meant by looking at the PDF (on the machine where it works) and seeing if it’s a font you recognise—if it is, I’d start with checking that font (family).

[Le Flaneur]

Originally Posted by Oisín 

Did you try following Cold Warrior’s advice? Your problem here sounds like an exact description of what happens when you have a corrupt font or font clashings.

Sadly, disabling all duplicates in Font Book makes no difference. I have no idea why the pdf views correctly on an earlier model of MacBook Pro also running 10.6.5.

[Oisín]

There’s probably a corrupt font somewhere, then. Try checking your fonts (File -> Check fonts [or something similar]); that’ll tell you if there are any font errors. If you get errors in any fonts, disable or delete them (as long as they’re not system fonts, of course!).

[Le Flaneur]

Originally Posted by Oisín 

There’s probably a corrupt font somewhere, then. Try checking your fonts (File -> Check fonts [or something similar]); that’ll tell you if there are any font errors. If you get errors in any fonts, disable or delete them (as long as they’re not system fonts, of course!).

The pdf views just fine in Acrobat 8 Pro, which indicates that all fonts are embedded in the pdf itself.

All of my fonts are either system fonts or Microsoft-installed fonts.

[Oisín]

^ The PDFs view fine in Acrobat on the machine where they’re usually garbled? That changes a lot. And leaves me out of my league.

(By ‘system fonts’, I didn’t mean fonts installed in a basic OS X install, but vital system fonts, like Helvetica and Lucida—delete those, and you’ll have a completely screwed up system. Many other fonts that are included are non-essential and can be deleted without messing up the system.)