9 ms·
Edge displays “123456” in PDF but prints “114447”
- EliRivers 9y agoThis reminds me of that photocopier that changed the numbers it was copying sometimes, through a dodgy image compression algorithm.
- ungzd 9y agoLink: http://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-workcentres_are_switching_written_numbers_when_scanning http://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-workcentres_...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- teilo 9y agoYes, note the tongue-in-cheek reference reference to that problem in the article: > (Possible workaround: Copy the document after printing using a Xerox copier.)
- faragon 9y agoThis reminds me JBIG2 compression errors... [1] [1] https://abbyy.technology/en:kb:tip:jbig2_compression_and_ocr https://abbyy.technology/en:kb:tip:jbig2_compression_and_ocr
- bloaf 9y agoHence the joke in the bug report.
- danso 9y agoJust in case you don't click through, the bug submitter refers to a color PDF (not a scan, so image compression artifacts are not an issue) that is similar in appearance to a periodic table. That is, it is not the sequence of `123456` that is mistranslated into `114447`, but a sequence of 6 table cells, each containing a single digit. It's not just the numbers that are misprinted, but the text inside those cells too, which suggests that Edge's PDF engine is re-rendering the original PDF, rather than printing the original PDF as is, which I thought was the entire point of using PDF in the first place. But maybe this is an edge case? In the sense that Microsoft assumes that given a PDF file, if a user wants to "Print to PDF", the user should just save the PDF file. "Print to PDF" is ostensibly used to convert HTML/DOC into PDF format.
- kiliancs 9y agoDefinitely an Edge case.
- saurik 9y agoAs someone who works in PDFs constantly (due to work in local government), I would say the point of a PDF is to be able to reproduce the result given a file, not to assume the file cannot be changed... you can easily edit and save PDF files using Acrobat, for example. It is common that when you "print to PDF" you take the output of the printer and serialize that to PDF. I use this feature often on my Mac (which I think many would claim has excellent support for dealing with PDF files) to build a PDF that is stripped of any interactive forms: so as to get an output which is only the PDF "as printed".
- jdmichal 9y agoAbsolutely right. PDF fixes the problem Word documents have where different versions of Word tends to render the document ever so differently. Usually in a way that seems to mess up all those beautiful page breaks you meticulously planned. It does this by every element having absolute positioning.
- MichaelGG 9y ago
- steipete 9y agoMaybe we really should bring https://pdfviewer.io https://pdfviewer.io to Windows. Looks like the default app is somewhat crap :P
- caxtonmon 9y ago> Maybe we really should bring https://pdfviewer.io https://pdfviewer.io to Windows. Looks like the default app is somewhat crap :P What was wrong with the OP posting a link to a PDF Viewer that doesn't corrupt the output when sent to printer?
- Sunset 9y agoWhy doesn't everyone use FoxitPDF in $current_year ?
- colejohnson66 9y agoWhat about SumatraPDF?
- jungletek 9y agoIMO, the far superior option.
- pilot72 9y agoLast time I tried it it had ads and was barely lighter than Adobe Reader
- dualogy 9y agoWell.. 1+2+3+4+5+6 == 1+1+4+4+4+7 --- a bug with a sense for 'numerology'!
- nom 9y agoThe PDF "format" never fails to amuse me. Check out the talk "OMG WTF PDF" [0] from the 27. Chaos Communication Congress, it's eye opening. 0: https://media.ccc.de/v/27c3-4221-en-omg_wtf_pdf https://media.ccc.de/v/27c3-4221-en-omg_wtf_pdf
- peapicker 9y agoThanks for that link.
- tjalfi 9y agoYou would probably like the James Mickens video "Life As A Developer: My Code Does Not Work Because I Am A Victim Of Complex Societal Factors That Are Beyond My Control"[0]. He starts talking about the Adobe PDF reader at 19:30. [0] https://vimeo.com/180568023 https://vimeo.com/180568023
- H4CK3RM4N 9y agoI still love that the SHA 1 collision was able to change the color of an image in a PDF, due to the junk data present.
- cmurf 9y agoThe PDF goes through different rendering paths for display vs print. It's GDI+ for display, and WPF with an XPS spool file for print. So my guess is whatever does PDF to XPS filtering/conversion is getting something wrong; but then it could be complicated by an addtitional bug in the print driver which is why the report says the bug depends on what printer is used for printing.
- reacweb 9y agoprinting to pdf should be independent of printer.
- hoodoof 9y agox
- askvictor 9y agoI've had similar issues with chrome's PDF viewer where it displays one number, but if I copy paste, it shows a different number.
- wdr1 9y agoI wonder if it's related to when Xerox copiers changed numbers? http://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-workcentres_are_switching_written_numbers_when_scanning http://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-workcentres_...?