[sereluna]

Two examples (these things normally work fine):
1) a PDF created from a web page in OS X displays as expected in Preview but with chunks of text missing and replaced with white space in Adobe Reader 6.0 on Windows.
2) a PDF created from TextEdit with quite a lot of typography settings applied (shadows and things) displays with the shadows in Preview but without the shadows in Windows.
Notes: re-creating the PDFs from the same document didn't help. The files weren't corrupt (I opened them from a flashdrive on both OSs).
Is it usual for PDFs to display non-identically on different systems or with different pieces of software? Is the problem Mac or Windows (the same Windows PC for both problems)?

[almaink]

If the fonts are not embedded you will get dubious results.

[sereluna]

Are the fonts embedded if I just create a PDF file from the print dialogue?
I don't know a lot about PDF creation.

[arkman]

I am surprised that your results are not consistent across platforms. I have been using the Print to PDF dialog since it was offered in Word and Safari and have had no negative comments from the recipients. I check over the documents on the Mac and attach them in emails and send them on their way.
As for the fonts, it is my understanding that the purpose of a PDF is to maintain document formatting by imbedding the fonts with the file. That is why it is portable. I would check the Adobe site for a possible contact with this question. If you do, please post it here so we all can benefit from their reply.

[jmincey]

Font embedding is not usually done by default because it makes the resulting PDF files very large -- and when the fonts in question are common across platforms, to embed the fonts becomes gratuitous. As a quick test, you could simply be sure that your source document contains only the most common fonts to Mac and Windows platforms alike -- fonts such as Arial, Times New Roman, etc. Then create a PDF without embedding fonts and see if it views correctly on the Windows computer.
My guess is that the file will look just fine because in that case the Windows computer would already have had the fonts installed natively.
Of course, you need not be limited to these fonts; I suggest this procedure only as a test. If the PDF looks great on both platforms, then the chances are good that you will need to embed the fonts in your PDF file (or alternatively you could request that the recipient of your PDF file install the custom fonts on his/her workstation).
As for how to embed fonts, this can be done in some applications; I'm not sure that it can be done in Preview or in any software bundled with OS X. I would have to look into this. (Obviously you could embed fonts if you are using Adobe's own Acrobat application.)

[griffman]

No answer for #1, but on #2 ... you won't see shadows and other fancy stuff in Reader (on the Mac or the PC), only in Preview. To preserve those, you have to print to PDF-X (in 10.4 only, I believe). However, I had other issues with the PDF-X output that were worse than missing shadows, so I went back to straight PDF.
-rob.

[sereluna]

Jeff: I did a test (4 PDF files of the same text in Helvetica, Times New Roman, Zapfino, and an obscure novelty font), and they all displayed correctly in Adobe Reader on Windows. Times New Roman produced the biggest file (28KB) to 24KB for Zapfino, 20KB for the novelty font, and 16KB for Helvetica -- that's for two paragraphs of text. Of the four only Times New Roman is on the Windows computer, so did all these fonts get embedded when OS X created the files?
Rob: is there anything else in PDF files that will only work in some readers?

[Steve_S]

In reply to:

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1) a PDF created from a web page in OS X displays as expected in Preview but with chunks of text missing and replaced with white space in Adobe Reader 6.0 on Windows.

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Just curious, how does it render with Adobe Reader on the Mac?
Steve

[Martian]

These questions pushed me to do the experiment I had been intending to do for some time.
EXPERIMENT:
1. Created Word page on the Mac using many fonts including some weird ones, italics, outline format, etc. and including some color shaded boxes
2. Converted .doc to .pdf though the print dialogue box.
3. Printed both the .doc and .pdf files
on a networked monochrome laser printer and on an inkjet photo printer,
using both the Mac with 10.3.9 and a PC running up to date XP.
4. The pdfs were printed from both the Mac and PC using their respective Adobe Reader 7.0.5. The .doc files were printed using approximately 3 year old versions of Word for the respective platforms.
RESULTS:
- All 4 pdf printouts were identical (except the monochrome laser obviously printed grayscale instead of color).
- The original Word document printouts from the Mac were identical to the pdf printouts from the respective printers.
- The original Word document printouts from the PC were very obviously missing some of the fonts.

[griffman]

That's about what I would have expected /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif. The only trouble I've had at all with PDFs relates to shadows added to objects (text or graphics) -- primarily from Pages and Keynote. The best way I've found to avoid the issue is to fake it using either a duplicate of the object in gray with some transparency (but then you can't fuzz it), or to make the object with the shadow in a graphics app (but then you have to worry about background integration, etc.).
If I'm doing something I know is going cross-platform, I'll usually just try to avoid using the shadows whenever possible.
-rob.