Good day -
I am seeing discrepancy in sending output to the Microsoft PDF driver. If i select preview with the same driver it is fine. However when I save as a MS PDF file and re-open the left margin is gone and in some cases makes reports hard to read. I also lose some GDI command such as Bold. Here is a simple example below:

More examples of GDI commands not interpreting:

(left xtext) (right mspdf)

I feel like I've seen the margin problem before, but I can't reproduce it now.

Perhaps it's version related; what versions do you have for ATE, the PDF driver, and Windows?

Also, have you tried inserting XORIGIN and YORIGIN directives?

The bold issue also sounds vaguely familiar, but that has to be something in the driver, as in the particular bold font being requested somehow isn't available in the driver. (PDF drivers, for example, have various strategies for mapping fonts. PDFX in particular has options for whether to emulate them, embed them, etc.) But A-Shell itself only makes a request to the font mapper and lets Windows decide on the best match.

Thanks for the reply. I guess there are lots of variables going on... not only the MS PDF driver but also the various readers. In this case this is an up to date w11 box so i have to imagine all drivers are current. I am going to test sending the output to another PDF driver. In the meantime here is the entire source of the first report:

//PASSTHROUGH=OFF
//SETFONT,120,Lucida Console,FIXED_PITCH,ANSI_CHARSET,FW_NORMAL,FS_UPRIGHT,0,-132
//SETMAPMODE,LOENGLISH
//SETPENEX,0,1
Created: 07/03/2024 EdgeMED ALPHA-TEST Database PA Page 1
Time: 9:41:45 am
//SETFONT,160,Arial,0,ANSI_CHARSET,FW_HEAVY
//TEXTCENTER,000,20,800,20,Quick Accounts Receivable
//SETFONT,120,Lucida Console,FIXED_PITCH,ANSI_CHARSET,FW_NORMAL,FS_UPRIGHT,0,-132
By: FRANK5 At: Job 3

//RECTANGLE,000,53,810,83,1
//SETFONT,120,Lucida Console,FIXED_PITCH,ANSI_CHARSET,FW_BOLD,FS_UPRIGHT,0,-132
Quick A/R Analysis
//SETFONT,120,Lucida Console,FIXED_PITCH,ANSI_CHARSET,FW_NORMAL,FS_UPRIGHT,0,-132



Patient: $-631,025.30

Insurance: $281,167.37

I think I know what the bold font problem is: you're requesting the Lucida Console font which is (apparently, and perhaps not surprisingly) specific to consoles (rather than printers). I was able to reproduce the problem here, using the PDFX viewer (which is completely independent of the Acrobat viewer, pretty much ruling out the possibility that it's just a viewer issue). The problem goes away if you switch to something more standard, like Courier New.

Furthermore, I've confirmed that the problem does not exist with the PDFX driver, which pretty much pins it down to some issue within the Microsoft Print to PDF driver. (Which suggests an even better / simpler solution!)

I still don't see the margin problem in either case, but I am fairly optimistic that XORIGIN/YORIGIN will resolve that.

Thanks Cap - this might be a dumb idea but... Our support server is licensed to use pdfx but the customer site does not. If I preview a report on the support server while connected to the customer, can I save it locally using the pdfx driver? If so that might solve the immediate problem.

In the meantime i will play with your suggestions. What do you recommend instead of Lucida Console.. Arial i guess?

No, not Arial -- it's proportional. You'll want a fixed pitch font, like Courier New. Actually, Consolas might be better (even though it's name suggests that it too is for consoles, it appears to work with Microsoft Print to PDF).

As for your idea of using PDFX on your client even though the server doesn't have it, it could be made to work but only if you got a client license for it. (Otherwise the license is supplied by the server.) If it's just your PC, we could issue you a special ATE license that you could install on your PC that would take care of it. Just send Ty a request for it.