On Wed, Nov 23, 2005 at 08:52:45AM -0600, Andrew Morrison wrote:
> Recently, I switched from using gv and xpdf to read my pdf files produced in
> lyx. As I was proofing my thesis, I reached a page where the graphics and
> text would not display in Acrobat Reader (version 7 for linux) but would
> still display in xpdf. In Acrobat, a window pops up that says "a drawing
> error occurred". In xpdf, even though the text and graphics displays, the
> terminal window has several lines of the same error:
> "Error: Bad bounding box in Type 3 glyph".
>
> I am concerned that if I send copies of the pdfs to people who want to read
> them on their computers, the files will not be readable in Acrobat reader.
> What should I do to make good pdfs?
>
How do you generate your pdf's from lyx?
If you have sufficient software installed, there is three ways:
1. pdf [uses latex,dvips,ps2pdf]
Disadvantage: the slowest way
Advantage: uses exactly the same mechanism as when printing. If
printing works, this works - and vice versa.
2. pdf (dvipdfm) [uses latex,dvipdfm]
Disadvantage: sometimes produce an invalid pdf, that happened to me.
This one was nasty - it worked in _my_ acrobat on
linux, but failed in the publisher's acrobat on windows.
Good it wasn't a pdf for wide distribution.
Advantage: somewhat faster than the above way
3. pdf (pdflatex) [uses pdflatex]
Advantage: Lightning fast compared to the other two - a pdf in one step!
Disadvantage: Don't necessarily support graphichs of the .eps type,
but they can be converted to pdf and will then work.
Of course the problem could be something else. Others have pointed out
that using type3 fonts isn�'t the way to make a good pdf, but such
a pdf should still be valid. Could be a broken program, or
possibly a bad font. Or even broken acrobat.
To look for the problem:
Load the file into acrobat. Use file->document properties->fonts
to find what type 3 fonts you have. Hopefully there are few, perhaps
a font embedded in a figure?
Helge Hafting
