LOW: uncontrollable line spacing in PDF output???

users
#1

Back in 2002 I produced a book, going straight to print off a Open Office
PDF, and the results were thoroughly satisfactory. In fact, my book at that
time was probably the first production book that was fully produced
straight from OO, skipping DTP altogether.

Today, 10 years later I'm doing a tentative layout for a book in Libre
Office, though this time without the intention of going to print from the
PDF, but I'm finding out I could not do it if I wanted to for there are
some unpredictable anomalies happening in the PDF in LIbre Office. (I have
not tried OO yet. Today I would probably use Scribus or Adobe Indesign to
prepare a proper print layout.) What is happening is that there are
completely unpredictable irregularities in the LO PDF output for which I
cannot find any evident cause.

   - There is irregular line spacing happening in the PDF output for
   reasons that are entirely unclear in the original.
   - In some cases opening smart quotes seem to display at a point size
   about 5 times the size of the text in the PDF (not in the actual document
   files), which at least provides a visual clue for the irregular line
   spacing.

Does anyone have similar experience, and has anyone perhaps found a
workaround, or is this an "issue."

#2

Hi Rogier,

Rogier F. van Vlissingen schrieb:

Back in 2002 I produced a book, going straight to print off a Open Office
PDF, and the results were thoroughly satisfactory. In fact, my book at that
time was probably the first production book that was fully produced
straight from OO, skipping DTP altogether.

Today, 10 years later I'm doing a tentative layout for a book in Libre
Office, though this time without the intention of going to print from the
PDF, but I'm finding out I could not do it if I wanted to for there are
some unpredictable anomalies happening in the PDF in LIbre Office. (I have
not tried OO yet. Today I would probably use Scribus or Adobe Indesign to
prepare a proper print layout.) What is happening is that there are
completely unpredictable irregularities in the LO PDF output for which I
cannot find any evident cause.

    - There is irregular line spacing happening in the PDF output for
    reasons that are entirely unclear in the original.
    - In some cases opening smart quotes seem to display at a point size
    about 5 times the size of the text in the PDF (not in the actual document
    files), which at least provides a visual clue for the irregular line
    spacing.

Does anyone have similar experience, and has anyone perhaps found a
workaround, or is this an "issue."

It is difficult to guess the reasons, when the original document is not available. But there are two things, you should check:
1. Do you have frames, pictures o.a. alone in a line? Then add a space before or after them. The line spacing is currently broken in those cases.
2. Do you use a font with extended features like "Cambria Math" has? Those fonts are not handled correctly.

For true diagnostics the file itself is needed.

Kind regards
Regina

#3

Try printing the document to a PDF printer as a testing option.

I use doPDF [free] for Windows and CUPS-PDF for Ubuntu.

I tend to use them for my documents that have specialty fonts that needs to be embedded into the PDF files that might not Export to PDF properly.

What I would do is try a PDF printer that created a PDF file instead of printing to paper. See what it looks like, compared to the Export to PDF option file and a print to paper "printed" document.

Those fonts that have "extended features" or special kerneling, or "special" line spacing options, etc., can be really a pain to get either a PDF or paper document to "print" out correctly.

There are a lot of these fonts out there that can have problems with your "printed" document. I hate them, but they can be useful if they have a specific use.

#4

Well I've tried with doPDF and the same absurd irregularities appear... so
that is not an improvement over the native pdf conversion.

Meanwhile, no pics, no special fonts, unless you consider Times New Roman a
special font. No Cambria Math, just plain old text. And it is really odd
when you see the opening quote on a word appear 10 point sizes bigger in
the PDF than it was in the original text- without any difference in the
point size in the text. And this irregularity then leads to irregular line
spacing, however at times the irregular line spacing happens without any
visual clues as to a 'cause.'

#5

Well, this is even more bizarre than I thought. This is all happening in
the context of a master document.

In unpredictable ways, there are either ellipses or opening quotes that
suddenly appear enlarged in the pdf of the master doc, causing also
irregular line spacing.
The same problem is not evident in the original doc, or even in the pdf of
the doc - it only manifests in the pdf of the masterdoc.

and... I can fix it by deleting the seemingly enlarged characters, and
replacing them with the same characters from a known good location.

In short the distortions are incidental to the merging into the masterdoc,
and have nothing to do with the PDF conversion, but are inherent to the
assembly process of subdocs into the masterdoc.

#6

Rogier ,

We produce about 8000 full color magazine pages a year using OO-LO on Windows, without any PDF anomalies

- are you using Windows ?

- what Fonts ?

you can also send some problematic pages to my personal emailadress

Groeten

Fernand

#7

Fantastic! I will send you some documentation of the issue to your personal
email!!!

#8

The solution and the probable cause...

In the end, this problem was fixable, by using 'clear direct formatting' in
the areas affected. (Could not do whole doc lest we wipe out italics and
such).

The amazing fact was that the problem did not manifest in a PDF at the
subdocument level, it just showed up in PDF output from the masterdoc. Very
likely it was some kind of imperfection with the process of switching fonts
somewhere in mid project. Unclear if it is substantial enough to rise to
the level of a reportable issue. It probably is, but I would not know how
to duplicate it.

#9

Rogier ,

Its not worth a issue, its user related due to serial direct formating, spaces folowd by spaces etc..When checking the underlying XML you can sea lots of unused tags and sometimes the PDF-creator is confused :slight_smile:

#10

Hmm, disappointing though. I cannot see how these kinds of things can be
avoided if you are editing a manuscript, and I never had such problems in
the past with OO in 2002, with a book that certainly went through just as
many revisions.

I am clueless anymore how to fix it. If I fix one, another one pops up...

#11

Rogier ,

There are some macro's or a extention around who makes the formating tags visible, just like we had with the good old WordPerfect, do some googling on "Iannz, RevealCodes"

hope it helps
Fernand

#12

Hi :slight_smile:
Ouch, i wish i had time and a stable enough internet connection to work on this.  Is the document uploaded to Nabble or somewhere yet?
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile: