COREL X3 AND .PDF FONT PROBLEM

[romana57]

Customer provided a large .pdf catalog which I attempted to import into Corel Draw X3. Normally don't have this problem (just once in awhile)....the document imported but alot of the english text converts into chinese looking characters? Is there anything I need to do first in order to prevent this from happening? I can view it okay in adobe reader but not when imported. I'm suspecting that the problem might be that the customer has either saved their document as a .pdf but without 'saving to curves or outlines' (depending on whether they've used corel or illustrator)....OR....they have generated their .pdf in a newer version of adobe acrobat (full program)? Any ideas how to resolve?

[coza]

Hi Romana,

I have seen it many times, my guess is that it could be a unicode issue, not sure, or else Corel is trying to be clever and substitutes different characters for ones it cannot read or figure out, or maybe the fonts are not embedded properly. I find that my DrawplusX4 programme opens PDF's much better than CorelX3, and often use it when I have these problems you mention, I then PDF it out again from DP, then can use it in Corel Draw most of the time, I also use Corel X3. I do not have the latest Xara product, so cannot test the behaviour there. To answer your question, besides the guessing, the best thing to do is to ask for the PDF to be converted to curves for you if possible, you can also use the free PDF-Xchange Viewer to open and to export PDF docs out @ 300dpi image files, but if you have a catalogue it becomes a mission if there are many pages, I use it in some cases where I get stuck. Sorry I can't help out more.

Cheers - George

[ChiefLee]

I still use X3, but purchased X5 to solve some of my importing issues. I think this error happens when PDFs are created in non-design programs, and DRAW isn't sure what to do with fonts that aren't loaded, even when they're embedded in the PDF. If it had been created in AI, you should have the option for converting fonts to objects while importing the PDF.