Making handouts is such hard work.
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Take a look at [url=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v290/curtmack/wtfletters.png]this[/url] mess. I have never seen somebody manage to fuck up a simple Microsoft Publisher handout that badly. What the hell did they do, use a separate textbox for every single letter?
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Black Attack? Is that Obama's new campain slogan? Maybe a rally?
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I've seen this happen in other places as well, and I, too, have no idea what causes it. Lowercase letters almost look like they were rendered in fixed pitch even though the font was variable, though uppercase stuff does not appear to follow that rule.
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I've seen such a thing happen when the appropriate font is not installed.
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It happens when something has been turned into PostScript (eg. by converting to PDF) and then displayed when the required font isn't available. IIRC a PostScript document positions characters or groups of characters at absolute positions on the page, so a font substitution after that process will give you exactly this result.
I say you can't blame users for not realising that fonts don't travel with documents. Of course it's a good thing when the font is Comic Sans, the unwanted offspring of the spritely young Tahoma and the more mature Script, who really should've known better at the time and worn some extra kerning for protection.
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@versatilia said:
It happens when something has been turned into PostScript (eg. by converting to PDF) and then displayed when the required font isn't available. IIRC a PostScript document positions characters or groups of characters at absolute positions on the page, so a font substitution after that process will give you exactly this result.
I say you can't blame users for not realising that fonts don't travel with documents. Of course it's a good thing when the font is Comic Sans, the unwanted offspring of the spritely young Tahoma and the more mature Script, who really should've known better at the time and worn some extra kerning for protection.
Well, afaik know Word and PDF can include embedded fonts (and at least word automatically includes non-standard fonts). So probably some lame PDF-printer was used, because I believe the acrobot-converter and word (2007) converter can include fonts.
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@versatilia said:
It happens when something has been turned into PostScript (eg. by converting to PDF) and then displayed when the required font isn't available. IIRC a PostScript document positions characters or groups of characters at absolute positions on the page, so a font substitution after that process will give you exactly this result.
I say you can't blame users for not realising that fonts don't travel with documents. Of course it's a good thing when the font is Comic Sans, the unwanted offspring of the spritely young Tahoma and the more mature Script, who really should've known better at the time and worn some extra kerning for protection.
That does make sense, although the same mess also came in my inbox as a static image. (Additional WTF: it was a BMP)
Also, for those who were curious, one of the school's colors is black, so that's where the "black attack" comes from, although I think it's stupid anyway.
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@dtech said:
Well, afaik know Word and PDF can include embedded fonts (and at least word automatically includes non-standard fonts). So probably some lame PDF-printer was used, because I believe the acrobot-converter and word (2007) converter can include fonts.
Yes, PDF:s can include fonts, but in practice they almost never do. Adobe sticks religiously to the copy-protection flag on commercial fonts, and will gladly replace them with Adobe Sans whenever and wherever the opportunity arises. Unless this has changed recently?
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@versatilia said:
It happens when something has been turned into PostScript (eg. by converting to PDF) and then displayed when the required font isn't available. IIRC a PostScript document positions characters or groups of characters at absolute positions on the page, so a font substitution after that process will give you exactly this result.
I say you can't blame users for not realising that fonts don't travel with documents. Of course it's a good thing when the font is Comic Sans, the unwanted offspring of the spritely young Tahoma and the more mature Script, who really should've known better at the time and worn some extra kerning for protection.
I've seen this more times than I care to count, with both PDF and PostScript documents (no surprise, there). It's most annoying when you download a 100+ page documentation package for some piece of software or hardware that needs to be configured, and you discover that the entire document has that "jiggly-text" effect where each letter is offset by a seemingly-random x and y value due to the document creator not embedding their personal favorite font in the document when they converted it.
I have yet to find a better solution than simply hunting down the author, and feeding him or her, toes-first, into a container full of rabid weasels. Failing that, I simply endure the inevitable headaches as I decipher enough of the document to accomplish my intended configuration task.
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Adobe products religiously obey the copyprotect flag for very good reason - Adobe products are designed first and foremost for professional designers. Contrary to popular belief, they are not overpriced products for making lolcats, they're simply niche products that fulfill a professional need. Fonts are not licensed for display - to do so would be hideously impractical and incredibly expensive. Fonts are licensed per-designer-seat. Professional designers know and understand this. They also know and understand the potential repercussions should they be caught screwing up the licensing - costs to them, to their customers, etc. It is thus important that their tools not autonomously violate those licenses.
Gonna go off on a tangent here, because I recently read some somewhat-related infuriating bullshit:
I was recently reading a HCI design book by Alan Cooper (the man is a retard and psychopath whose only goal in life is to make money by ripping off other people's previously published work and restating common sense, and then publishing it in books that receive regular revisions where he alternates between adding and removing one or two sections of text) where he absolutely BLASTS Adobe Illustrator for having an "incomprehensible dialog box" regarding font licensing if you try to embed a font that you legally can't. It clearly states, in terms that designers use and understand what the problem is and why there is a problem. Cooper, in typical form, claims this message is incomprehensible (to professional designers, it's not). In fact, one of his favorite sources for examples is Adobe products, where he continually claims that various design-domain terminology is incomprehensible to the application's intended user. Maybe he missed the memo, but just because you're a self-proclaimed expert on user interface design doesn't mean you're a graphic design professional. In fact, I am also not a professional designer, and yet I know what every single incomprehensible thing he bitches about means. Why? Because I use Photoshop to make lolcats, and I live off and on with a graphic designer who is rather enthusiastic about her trade, and I don't mind learning.
At some point, I really should write that twat a letter about this, and also include the bit about where he was applauding the interface design used on fighter jets where they carefully hid away the ejector seat handle so it can't be accidentally fired, despite a long and storied history of accidents involving mostly female pilots who have to mostly disrobe to take a pee during long-haul flights triggering their ejector seats by getting it caught in their flight suit. I don't expect that's a pretty sight, accidentally ejecting yourself from an airplane while you aren't strapped into your seat and are halfway out of your damned clothes.
