Arabic in PDF not displaying

[ismailr]

salam `alaykum & hello everyone

i've been send a PDF file which contains arabic, but for some reason it doesn't display properly at all - in fact no characters are displayed at all.

anyone know why this could be... i have loads of arabic fonts installed on the mac.

[fangpyre]

So are you sending or receiving this file?
PDFs are self contained, and you should be able to see it regardless of what's on your system.

[ismailr]

thats what i thought, and that has been my experience until now.

the pdf was sent to me... frmo someone using a windows machine i assume.

its the first time i had this problem

any ideas?

[Zaid Al Hilali]

Fonts were not embedded, to view text properly you must have same font. Alternatively, pdf creator should use recommended methods in creating standard pdfs.

[saim05]

يمكنك حل ذلك عن طريق تغيير الخطوط واستخدام خطوط open type...

[DXB Law]

Fonts were not embedded, to view text properly you must have same font. Alternatively, pdf creator should use recommended methods in creating standard pdfs.

Zaid, this is a problem that I am starting to see increasingly often with PDFs downloaded from government websites in the UAE, Qatar and elsewhere in the region. When I open the PDF file it says that a required font (usually "Simplified Arabic" or "Transparent Arabic") is missing and cannot be displayed properly, so I get gibberish characters in the PDF instead of proper Arabic text. It is my understanding that there are two problems here: (1) the PDF creator did not embed the fonts and (2) the PDF creator used non-standard fonts (it is my understanding that those two fonts are old and not much used anymore even on Windows PCs).

I don't know if it is a "new" problem or simply a problem that is now becoming apparent as entities that never posted documents for public download are now doing so, using PDFs created on old machines or by people who are not familiar with best practices for creating the PDFs.

The real problem is what is a Mac user supposed to do about it?

If I need to read a PDF posted by, for example, the Qatar Ministry of Economy & Commerce, it is no good my complaining to them about the methods and fonts they used in creating the PDF. And the rest of the Windows-using universe just says "see -- I told you that Macs were no good in business - why don't you go out and buy a 'real computer' like everyone else."

I do have Parallels on one of my Macs, and I guess I could boot up Windows whenever I encounter one of these non-standard PDF files. But that is frustrating, because I don't run Parallels on all of my Macs, and as the list of circumstances grows where I need to use Parallels to work around limitations in Mac OSX the question begins to arise why don't I just bite the bullet and go back to Windows?

But I thought the whole point of PDF was to be platform-independent.

Isn't there a plug-in or an editable preference in Adobe Reader that would let me override the font chosen by the PDF creator?

[DXB Law]

Here is the solution to the problem:

If the PDF is not displaying Arabic and is returning an error message saying that either "Simplified Arabic" or "Transparent Arabic" font is missing, go to this website

Download the following fonts:
simpo.ttf
simpbdo.ttf
simpfxo.ttf
artro.ttf
artrbdo.ttf

One by one, double-click the icon for each downloaded font (they will be in your downloads folder). Then click the button for "Install Font". When you have installed them all, restart Adobe Reader and the Arabic text should now display correctly.

[Zaid Al Hilali]

Salam DXB Law, I'm away from the net most of the time these days and so couldn't attend to your post earlier unfortunately.

You are right that recently this issue started to appear more than ever, even though this is not a new issue. Educating Windows users have proven to be tough. We have always spoken to Windows users to acquire decent fonts even free ones would do the job rather than using the old Transparent Arabic and Simplified Arabic fonts that were created in late 70's, these two fonts are just ugly and restrictive when creating PDF, but Windows users seems to fall in love with them!

When generating PDF from MS office 2003 and earlier, the PDF Maker plug in would show a message that the fonts (mentioned above) are restricted by the manufacturer/vendor and can't be embedded, user would then have the chance to remove said fonts from being embedded but generate PDF anyway.

Good news or perhaps it's bad news, Acrobat 9 on Windows, in conjunction with MS Office 2007 will NOT allow users to generate a PDF as long as above fonts are in the MS Office document - period!!

Above mentioned restricted/locked fonts have been sold by Glyph, so when any one try to generate a PDF, the message says…
%%[ Font vendor (Glyf) does not permit this font to be embedded in PDF. ]%%
Now try to explain this to some government organization, oh boy I get some really nasty response that Acrobat is not working, come and get it replaced or some other comments. The simple fact is that they must use another not restricted font.

Your solution is ok, I have also downloaded Mac-version of simplified and transparent fonts to read such pdfs, but I can't find them on my machine now! What are these fonts in the list?

PS. I have noticed your contribution on Apple Support forum on this topic, you may quote things from here if it helps others.

[Zaid Al Hilali]

Found one on my other machine…

[GeneralRage]

Thanks guys,

I downloader the fonts and followed the instructions and it works!!
All the documents are opening fine!

A R