[Solved] Generated PDF prints garbage characters on Windows

[eggz]

Hi - I'm wondering if anyon has come across this problem before...

I'm occasionally asked to produce newsletters, menus etc for local businesses and groups, Scribus is naturally my tool of choice. However after generating the PDF I find that while it displays as expected on Windows 10 in the Reader App, in Edge, in Firefox pdf.js and Chrome, when I print to my Epson WP-4025 I get garbage/random charaters showing up where normal text should be.

This doesnt happen if I print the same PDF from Linux. So for a long time I've just written this off as an annoying printer driver quirk (especially as I sometimes send the PDFs away to be printed and never hear of any problems)

However today I tried printing one of these PDFs at a different location. Again Windows 10, but this time a HP Officejet 7500a. Once again, same random junk at the bottom of the page. Once again, printing using Linux on this printer worked fine.

I've searched the Mantis bug tracker briefly, but couldnt find anything that seemed relevant. I've got a workaround (print from Linux), so I'm just wondering if I'm doing something wrong/have discovered a Windows bug/have discovered a Scribus bug.

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[a.l.e]

how are you creating the pdf?

[GarryP]

Unfortunately I can't help with the printing issue - I don't currently have a printer to test it on - but, in case it helps the diagnosis, I can confirm that the "garbage" does not show when the PDF is opened in (on Windows 10 Home 64-bit):
* Acrobat Reader DC 2017
* Firefox 56
* Affinity Designer 1.5.3
* Chrome 62
* Edge 40
* TeXworks 0.6.1

[mnawij]

Hello, this error usually occurs due to a lack of (1) postscript driver (2) bad font (3) corrupted image (4) copy and pasted text from a website with hidden HTML, etc... Eliminating the possibles will help.  Have you tried outlining the fonts before printing? That would eliminate one source. Also opening the various image files and saving them as a different format. Make sure copy and pasted text is passed through a "plain" text editor before being put into Scribus.  Making sure the printer is running postscript driver and not such drivers as PCL5 or such.  As simple as opening file in another PDF application and re-saving the file as an alternate PDF.  If all else fails, convert the PDF file to a high resolution image and print it that way from Windows.  I am not much of a Windows person, but I do know that Windows 10 has a new back-end print engine. Some other ideas might pop into my brain later... Good Luck! I hope this clears up some of the mud!

mnawij

[eggz]

Many thanks for the quick response and suggestions. Outlining the fonts seems to have fixed it for the Win10/WP4025 combination.

(Just in case anyone is still interested, before that I tried reprinting the PDF using Win 10s Print To PDF driver. The resulting PDF rendered on screen slightly differently particularly in the bottom third. It looked a bit like the text was swapped out for a bitmap representation. Printing that PDF resulted in even more text corruption. If I ever get more time I might try investigang further, stripping down the file to a smaller test case. But to repeat: Right now, solved- outline the fonts.)