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Dotted line not showing in PDF

Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2017 6:27 pm
by miker
I do a piece, using some dotted line smart shapes to show melody transfer to a different voice. No problem.

I generate a PDF, and everything is fine, but when I email the PDF, the recipient does not see the lines.

This has happened with numerous pieces, but with the same recipient. Other people see the lines just fine, so I'm pretty sure the issue is at his end. What can I tell him to check? (He is 84, and has no computer skills other than on/off and reading email. He might be able to get help, but I need to suggest exactly what his help should look for.) He is on Windows, but I'm not sure which version.

Re: Dotted line not showing in PDF

Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2017 6:37 pm
by N Grossingink
I assume by "dotted lines", you mean the dots are font characters. If you're using Maestro, it could be your friend doesn't have the font on his machine. But you're on a Mac, and the Mac PDF creator embeds the fonts, doesn't it? Might be worth double checking this.

I'd try changing the dot to a commonly found font such as Times or Hell-vetica. Maybe that will solve the problem.

N.

Re: Dotted line not showing in PDF

Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2017 6:52 pm
by motet
I don't think lines are done with characters from a font. I would suspect the Mac PDF Creator. Can you somehow try it with something else? If you want, email the .musx file to me and I will make a PDF with CutePDF Pro and we'll see if that works. Or, post a Dropbox link here.

Re: Dotted line not showing in PDF

Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2017 7:00 pm
by N Grossingink
motet wrote:I don't think lines are done with characters from a font.
I should have specified a "Custom Smart Shape" consisting of dots, actually repeated periods.

N.
DottedLine.png
DottedLine.png (67.31 KiB) Viewed 15147 times

Re: Dotted line not showing in PDF

Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2017 7:16 pm
by miker
Sorry for confusion. I mean the dashed line smart shape. I am creating the PDF with the Mac print dialogue. So I'm wondering if something isn't being embedded properly, or if the problem is at his end.

Re: Dotted line not showing in PDF

Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2017 7:36 pm
by zuill
If every one else sees it okay, then there might be an issue with just him. Have you tried another pdf program?

Zuill

Re: Dotted line not showing in PDF

Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2017 7:38 pm
by N Grossingink
If you're using the hardwired dashed line on the palette, why not try making a custom line to the same settings to see if maybe that shocks the line into working?

N.

Re: Dotted line not showing in PDF

Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2017 7:41 pm
by motet
If "everybody else" has a Mac and he has Windows, that could explain it. Mac PDF Creator could have a bug that doesn't manifest on the Mac. But this is easily to find out by using another PDF creator program.

Re: Dotted line not showing in PDF

Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2017 9:37 pm
by BuonTempi
You might want to try opening the PDF in Preview and re-saving it there. This has been known to fix some problems in PDFs straight out of Finale in the past.

Re: Dotted line not showing in PDF

Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2017 10:14 pm
by MikeHalloran
A .pdf is not a picture of a file. It uses fonts. Changing the .pdf creator on the Mac will accomplish nothing. Adobe Acrobat Pro is pretty expensive—it can do things that Preview can't but it's unlikely that the file will look any different.

It is an issue with the recipient. The short term workaround is to open the file in Preview and export as a .jpg or .png—those are pictures of the file.

The real solution is to fix the fonts on the Windows machine.

If the recipient does not have the latest version of the Finale fonts, the old ones should be purged and the new ones installed.

Re: Dotted line not showing in PDF

Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2017 10:17 pm
by zuill
When fonts are embedded, then one doesn't need the fonts on their machine. I send pdf files to clients who don't have the Maestro font and the music prints just fine. I think a good experiment would be to have someone with Windows create the pdf for Mike and see if that works for the client.

Zuill

Re: Dotted line not showing in PDF

Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2017 10:19 pm
by BuonTempi
MikeHalloran wrote:A .pdf is not a picture of a file. It uses fonts. Changing the .pdf creator on the Mac will accomplish nothing.
Preview REWRITES the PDF stream when it saves documents. As said, this has been known to fix parsing problems with PDFs from Finale in the past. It may or may not be the fix for this problem, but it IS worth trying.

Re: Dotted line not showing in PDF

Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2017 11:17 pm
by miker
BT,
I'm certainly going to give that a try. I know for a fact that the man at the other end will be unable to understand any solution that he would have to implement.
Thanks for the suggestion.

Re: Dotted line not showing in PDF

Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 12:40 am
by motet
MikeHalloran wrote:A .pdf is not a picture of a file. It uses fonts. Changing the .pdf creator on the Mac will accomplish nothing. Adobe Acrobat Pro is pretty expensive—it can do things that Preview can't but it's unlikely that the file will look any different.

It is an issue with the recipient. The short term workaround is to open the file in Preview and export as a .jpg or .png—those are pictures of the file.

The real solution is to fix the fonts on the Windows machine.

If the recipient does not have the latest version of the Finale fonts, the old ones should be purged and the new ones installed.
PDF doesn't exclusively use fonts, and I'd be very surprised if Mike's dashed lines are done with such. Regardless, the recipient should not need Finale fonts at all--they are included in the PDF file.

Re: Dotted line not showing in PDF

Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 11:01 am
by musikai
I also would suppose that perhaps the used PDF Reader isn't the greatest. Eg. the PDF is opening in a default browser plugin.
For Windows a nice lightweight PDF-Reader is SumatraPDF which is small and doesn't even need to be installed.

I'm not allowed to post url:
sumatrapdfreader . org

Re: Dotted line not showing in PDF

Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 5:33 pm
by MikeHalloran
BuonTempi wrote:
MikeHalloran wrote:A .pdf is not a picture of a file. It uses fonts. Changing the .pdf creator on the Mac will accomplish nothing.
Preview REWRITES the PDF stream when it saves documents. As said, this has been known to fix parsing problems with PDFs from Finale in the past. It may or may not be the fix for this problem, but it IS worth trying.
Sure it's worth trying. Why not? MM doesn't always follow the Apple Developers Toolkit and this causes quite a few problems, many having to do with fonts.

My point was —and still is— that the problem is with the person receiving the file in Windows, not the person sending it from a Mac.

Re: Dotted line not showing in PDF

Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 5:41 pm
by motet
I'm not sure why you conclude that. That may indeed be the case, but it's also plausible that the Mac PDF creator assumes something it shouldn't (like the presences of Finale fonts, as you say).

Re: Dotted line not showing in PDF

Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 6:21 pm
by BuonTempi
MikeHalloran wrote:My point was —and still is— that the problem is with the person receiving the file in Windows, not the person sending it from a Mac.
Yes. Each different PDF Viewer has to interpret the PDF code, and different engines do this differently. If the Windows PDF viewer can't handle the PDF out of Finale, but Preview can, then it's possible that re-saving it from Preview will render the PDF stream in a manner more palatable to the Windows PDF engine.

See this thread in the old forum, where saving in Preview fixed a similar issue.
http://forum.makemusic.com/default.aspx?f=6&m=247460

Re: Dotted line not showing in PDF

Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 6:25 pm
by zuill
I would be willing to:

1. Test viewing the pdf on my system to see if I get the errant result.

2. Test making a pdf on my system to see if the outcome is the same.

I always though CutePDF and other 3rd party software could be used on a Mac. Am I mistaken? I have no problem embedding all data in my files, whether going to Windows or Mac.

Zuill

Re: Dotted line not showing in PDF

Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 6:52 pm
by miker
FOLLOW UP:

I tried BT's suggestion, and opened the doc in Preview, and then exported as a PDF. It worked! Thank you! Burt can see the dotted lines.

Now, if I can just remember till next time...

Thanks to all who made suggestions.

Re: Dotted line not showing in PDF

Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 7:02 pm
by motet
Is that Mac print dialog function something that Finale does, or more general Mac code? The PDF-creating stuff in Windows Finale is notoriously bad.

Re: Dotted line not showing in PDF

Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 7:30 pm
by BuonTempi
motet wrote:Is that Mac print dialog function something that Finale does, or more general Mac code?
It's MacOS code. CoreGraphics is "essentially" PDF - descended from Display PostScript on NeXT systems. So the conversion should be fairly minimal. If there's a parsing problem in Finale's output, which Preview can fix, then that suggests there's something wrong with Finale's graphical implementation of the dotted line in the first place.

PDFKit is not without its bugs, but clearly that's not where the blame lies here. It's worth flagging the error with MM.