Author: David W. Goodrich
Company: Birdtrack Press

PRINTING PDF FILES CONTAINING EAST ASIAN CHARACTERS

PDF format version 1.3 ("compatible with Acrobat 4") added the ability to handle East Asian characters in 1999.  Thus versions of Adobe Acrobat and Reader less than 5 years old can display Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CJK) text if the appropriate fonts are embedded when generating the PDF.  Even if the fonts are not embedded, English-language versions of Acrobat and Reader can still display CJK text if one adds the CJK capabilities Adobe makes available (like Reader, these are free, and can be downloaded from www.adobe.com).

One peculiarity of some versions of Acrobat and Reader is that the printing menu, by default, is set to enlarge (or shrink) the PDF page size to fit the printer driver's default paper size.  This can be quite handy under some circumstances, but like so many instances of letting a computer do the thinking, it can cause problems -- I've been surprised by the number of times publishing professionals said my PDF type samples were sized incorrectly because they unwittingly let Acrobat/Reader enlarge the printout.  Once you turn this feature off, it stays off until you turn it on again.

CJK text adds complexity that may occasionally overload the printing system on the computer where the PDF is being viewed.  The simplest fix is to check the "print as image" option on Acrobat/Reader's printing menu.  This almost always works, but it slows printing dramatically -- I often wait till printing dies on particular page, print that one as an image, and then resume regular printing.  If this happens frequently, you might consider increasing the printer's RAM, or check how the usual suspects -- printer driver, allocation of system resources, etc.

Note, too, that combining various versions of Acrobat/Reader with different printer drivers can produce slightly different results.  For example, when I print a given PDF through the PostScript driver for Acrobat 5 under Windows XP Pro to an HP LaserJet 5000 (for which HP offers only a "clone" of Adobe Postscript), the type looked anemic at 600 dpi beside a printout made with the HP's PCL driver.

Also, the pagination of a PDF often differs from the pagination for the text within the PDF.  For example, many PDFs begin on arabic-numeral p. 1, and the page numbers increase from 1 in a single and continuous series, even though the document numbers the initial pages with roman numerals.  But it is also possible to divide PDFs into sections, with the numbers starting anew at the beginning of each.  Acrobat and Reader display the current page number and the total number of pages, allowing one to check how they correspond to the text's pagination.  Different versions of Acrobat and Reader may not accept roman numerals as valid input, even though that is the format for that section's page numbering (on multi-lingual systems, make sure your input mode is alphanumeric).  Usually a little trial and error will work around any difficulties.  If all else fails, one can navigate to a particular page and choose "print current page."

Mac OS X includes built-in software for reading (and generating) PDF files.  As I understand the situation, the reading abilities are not as current as Adobe's Reader.  Similarly, the ability to generate PDFs by "saving as" in that format in the print dialog apparently does not offer the precise control over the innumerable parameters offered by the full version of Acrobat or Acrobat Pro; those parameters are often crucial in formal publication, print or electronic, but obviously this method can be very handy as a way to generate quickly a file that should look the same when viewed or printed on different systems.

Finally, Acrobat security features can be set to restrict how PDFs are used, and these include preventing printing.