by Mark Gavin
Following is a collection of screen shots taken using a single PDF file displayed under Acrobat 4 through Acrobat 8.
Acrobat 4
Acrobat 5
Acrobat 6
Acrobat 7
Acrobat 8
Following is a PDF file which demonstrates the text shifting problem:
This particular drawing error is caused by passing a large negative character spacing in a text array when the text is of zero length.
132.96 741.6 TD -0.06048 Tc [()-4800()] TJ -0.32976 Tc (A) Tj
Since Adobe has never documented proper coding constructs; the above has become a common technique used by some third party developers to move to the beginning of a line.
The PDF Reference states “Strings presented to the text-showing operators may be any length…”. Since the PDF Reference does not state that text can not be zero length; the above PDF construct is correct. Unfortunately, it looks like someone in the Acrobat 8 engineering team “didn’t get the memo”.
My original title for this entry was “When is a validation tool, not a validation tool?” But that looked a bit too long and the reference a bit obscure.
PDF does not have a concept of “Well Formed and Valid” like XML. In addition, Adobe has never created a PDF validation tool to help PDF developers determine if the PDF they produce is correct. By default; Adobe Reader is used by developers as a PDF validation tool. Unfortunately, Adobe Reader is not, and never was intended to be, a validation tool.
With glaring errors like this in Acrobat 8; the whole concept of PDF as “digital paper” begins to unravel.
