Lesson Notes, certain words fail to print out

[Bob1]

I've noticed this before, but this is the first time it bothered me enough to write in. The entire text of lesson notes shows up OK on my screen, but certain Japanese words (in the grammar points section only) fail to print out (although empty spaces are left where the words should be) when I send it to the Brother Justio colour laser printer in my office. I am running Mac OS X 10.7.4, and using Adobe Reader 10.1.3. Here are the specific words (in order) that do not print out from the Grammar Points section of Upper Intermediate S5, Lesson 15. It would be noted, that even while these specific words don't print out, the associated bullet points and punctuation (commas and parentheses) sometimes do. Here goes with the list:

(page eight)

要するに、フィードバック機能がついた学習システムということ？
ようするに、フィードバックきのう　が　ついた　がくしゅうシステム　と　いう　こと？

言い換えれば　（いいかえれば）

言い換えれば（いいかえれば）言い換えると いいかえると

言い換えれば
いいかえれば

つまり

つまり

(page nine)

つまり

つまり
つまり

つまり
つまり

要するに　（ようするに）

要するに
ようするに

要するに
ようするに

要するに
ようするに

すなわち

すなわち

(page ten)

すなわち

すなわち
すなわち

すなわち
すなわち

結局　（けっきょく）

結局
けっきょく

結局
けっきょく

ということは

ということは
ということは

The three examples from the dialogue shown on page 11 all print out OK. Clearly, there is something with the way these specific target phrase are coded in the pdf that befuddle my printer. Am I the only one with this problem?

[Jessi]

Hi Bob1,
Thank you for posting!
After checking the lesson PDF, I've been able to conclude that for whatever reason, your printer is not printing words that are bold in the PDF. We tried printing them out here using the same settings (Adobe Reader and the latest Mac OSX), and it printed out okay, so I'm thinking that there might be some issue with the Japanese fonts installed on your computer.
In the meantime, can you try printing out the Lesson Notes Lite version of the PDF? The content is the same, but the fonts are embedded, so I don't think there will be any issues when printing it out. Please let us know if that works!

Thank you!

[Bob1]

Thanks, Jessi. By the way, you make a great team with Yuichi, regardless what the sukiyaki uranai said.

Yes, printing out the lesson notes lite version (where all fonts are embedded) works, although I prefer the darker text output of the regular notes.

Although my Macbook Air is set to English, to the best of my knowledge, I have the full Japanese font default installation. My top suspicion is the printer; Brother implements its own postscript substitute to avoid paying royalties. Although I use a lot of Japanese, these bold Japanese text in your pdfs is the only thing I have noticed that does not print out on my printer. Is there anything I can check to narrow down the culprit? I'm reasonably OS X literate, as Peter should be able to attest.

[mmmason8967]

That document prints out OK for me using Windows 7 and a Xerox Postscipt printer. I think the problem you're seeing is almost certainly related to font substitution.

The bold kana in the document are in Arial Unicode MS Bold, which is probably not installed on your Mac. As far as I know, recent versions of Windows and Mac include the regular version of this font (i.e. Arial Unicode MS Regular) but not the bold version. The PDF reader program has to use something else for that font, usually another similar font. It's possible that a bold variation can be created by 'fattening up' the regular font in some way; I suspect this may be the case with the Windows-based programs I'm using since Sumatra PDF Reader produces a bold that is almost indistinguishable from the regular version, while Foxit Reader produces nice, black characters.

When a PDF gets printed there's another round of font substitution, since the fonts available on the printer will probably be different to the ones installed on the PC. It's possible that your reader software thinks that the printer has a suitable font available for rendering Arial Unicode MS Bold but that this font doesn't contain kana or kanji, so you get empty rectangles where the characters should be.

I hope this helps you to work out where your problem is.

マイケル

[Bob1]

Thank-you mmmason8967,

I will be upgrading to Mountain Lion fairly soon, and I suppose that there's an outside chance that might fix the problem. If not, I'll ask my font expert friend whether there is any way I can install Arial Unicode MS Bold on my Mac. BTW, I do not get empty rectangles, but rather just blank space.

[mmmason8967]

Some things you could try in the meantime…

Try printing the document as an image. This option is available on Adobe Reader but may not be available on other PDF readers. Basically it converts each page into a huge image file and then prints that. It's slower and you may be forced to print one page at a time, but on the plus side you get exactly what you see on the screen.

Try changing the font-handling options on the printer driver. For example, you may be able to stop the printer driver using the built-in fonts in the printer, which would eliminate font-substitution problems. Or if that doesn't work, you might be able to make the driver send bitmaps of the fonts instead of outlines.

Finally, you could try installing another PDF reader. Despite what everyone says about PDF giving the same results regardless of hardware or software, I definitely get different results from different PDF readers on Windows and so I assume it'll be the same on a Mac.

マイケル

[Bob1]

Hi mmmason8967,

Thank-you very much for your suggestion to print as an image. I was unaware of that option, but it was available under "Advanced." It worked perfectly, and it wasn't appreciably slower on my setup. Furthermore, I was able to select page ranges just as I always do, so there was no significant disadvantage.

[Jessi]

Thank you for the suggestions, mmmason!