PC Guy Needs Mac Help
 

Hi All,

I deployed a CMS based Website for a community radio station that I volunteer at. The program schedule is in .pdf form and I have had a complaint (from the fundraising manager no less) that the schedule does not display correctly on a Mac. She also reports that the downloaded version is also a scrambled mess. Which version of the O/S and browser she uses I do not know but that information is forthcoming.

Not having a Mac nor access to one I was hoping a few of you could have a peek and report what you see. The address is www.wscafm.org and the link is near the bottom of the left hand nav bar. It is cleverly titles "program schedule" :)

Thanks in advance,

Jim L

I can see it just fine

I can see it too. The text is small, but it needs to be to fit on one page. You might tell her to control-click or right-click on the link and download the file. Then she can open it in Preview and zoom in on the page.


This is a problem. If you're going to develop web pages, you really should at least be checking the results on a Mac.

Are you aware that you can run Windows along side OS X on the new Macs?

http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/
http://www.parallels.com/

Thank you,

Could you please tell me your version/browser combo? Do you know if this is a common issue to a particular version or browser? The staffer claims that all other PDF's open fine.

On a PC you can right mouse click and select "save file as" which will actually download it as opposed to opening it. Does this work with Mac's also?

Thanks again and in advance to anyone else who would be willing to take a minute to do the same.

Jim

As far as I can tell this is not a problem for anyone else including other Mac users. We have 3 or 4 Mac users at the station and they do not report any issues. We have about 300 unique visitors a day and none of them have complained either.

I did test the site on IE, NN and FF on a PC as well as on a few Linux machines we have that use Konqueror and FF. I am not really in the habit of doing sites but I thought I was pretty well covered.

Jim

BTW the complaint is not a size issue. She claims it is a totally scrambled unreadable mess.

Jim

10.4.8 on a Dual G5, with Safari Version 2.0.4 (419.3)

Yes, it does. See my earlier post.

My guess is that the font is corrupt on her system. It can happen. :(

A good guess it is. I had not even thought of that.

I wonder (out loud) if you can easily re-install fonts on Mac's and how I can determine which font the .pdf uses.

Hmmmm. I shall search.

Thanks again,

Jim

/Applications/Font Book

The Mac invented fonts - at least on computers.


It's your file. The font is determined by what you used.

Depending on what generated the PDF, it's highly likely that the font is embedded in the PDF itself. Portable Document Format.

Possibly embedded, but not definitely. Since it isn't displaying properly, it probably isn't embedded.

http://www.pdfbox.org/userguide/fonts.html

Right. If it were embedded and corrupt, none of us would see it. But it looks fine to me.

anybody know how to clean the cache files manually?

In Safari? Command-option-e

On second thought it can't be the font. She claims even the boxes are not boxes but just random lines. The document itself was created by the programming department and there is a good chance it was on a Mac.

I am going to try displaying it in a "wrapper" and see if that works. If not then I really don't know. She is obviously irritated by the fact that I am telling her it is her machine and she is convinced that it is not. She uses this schedule on the road while hitting up sponsors so needs it to work.

Any and all other ideas are welcome and thanks for all the input.

Jim

Works fine on an MacBook and iMac G5 both on 10.4.8 both with Safari 2.0.4.

Its a bit of a long shot..... dont suppose she is using a REALLY old Mac that runs OS9 or OS8 is she?
What browser is she using? and what version of Acrobat?

Please tell me its not Acrobat 4 and Internet Explorer!!! :D

That could very well be the case. I requested the version and browser info yesterday afternoon but she has not E-mailed me back yet. I suspect she thinks I am just passing the buck or being a wise guy. She may not even know how to find out. We have some 200 volunteers and yours truely gets to handle them all as the sole IT guy. After two years I am still not tuned in to the level of each persons skill set.

I will post it as soon as I know,

Jim

You could ask her to take a screen capture of the whole screen and then email that to you. Looking at the screen capture should tell us whether she is using OS X or not and it might give more clues.

To take a screen capture of the whole screen (This procedure should work in both OS X and OS 9 and earlier):
Press and hold the Shift and Command (Apple) keys and then press the 3 key and you should hear a small "click" sound indicating that the screen image has been saved. The image will be saved on your Desktop as "Picture 1", "Picture 2", etc.

Scrambled PDf help
 

Did you ever find a solution to this problem. I have a iMac G5 using Panther ie. OSX. 3 i think.
My pdf's are coming in completely scrambled too. I looked at your radio station schedule pdf and have the same problem.
The software I use to read pdf's is called Preview. No help on mac website or in software help.
If you've come up with a sol'n please let me know.
Thanks
Wendy

Do you have Adobe Reader? If that can't read it either, then that will tell us it's something to do with your system. If it can read it, then it's more likely just Preview that's got problems.

Thanks!
 

I dowloaded Acrobat reader and it opened it fine. Perhaps I just need a newer version of Preview.
For now, do you know how I can make Acrobat the default for opening pdf's?
Thanks,
W

It's in the Get Info window for a file. Set the "Open with:" to the Adobe Reader and click "Change All..."

It looks like the original poster of this thread has a security problem with his web site...

Probably should check it out:

www.wscafm.org

I too have problems viewing the PDF using Preview, and the Safari plugin from http://www.schubert-it.com/pluginpdf/, although Adobe Reader 7.0.9 has no problems.

Does this mean that it is not a font problem, but a limitation of my versions of Preview and the Schubert.it plugin?

Safari 1.3.2
Preview 2.1.0
Adobe Reader 7.0.9

These are the latest versions at the time of posting (for OS X 10.3.9).

Could be a limitation of your Preview if you're using OS 10.3. The PDF file in question opens without any issue 10.4's Preview.

Thanks,
That was a big help.
W