Printing to PDF is unreadable

[Yegor Fadeyev]

Calibre version: 5.6.0
OS: Kubuntu 20.04

If you open the attached EPUB in the viewer, and try to print it to PDF with default options, this will produce unreadable output. The letters in the words are misplaced (see page 2).

For longer EPUBs, sometimes there is also a similar problem when running EPUB -> PDF conversion.

The attached archive contains the EPUB causing the problem and my PDF output.

[Kovid Goyal (kovid)]

Fixed in branch master. The fix will be in the next release. calibre is usually released every alternate Friday.

 status fixreleased

[Yegor Fadeyev (yegorf)]

Version 5.7.0 makes things a bit better, but still not perfect. I could not come up with a minimal example, so I attach a real book from my library. The paragraph text renders well most of the time (not always!), but the titles and subtitles are still messed up. I tested the conversion with DejaVu family fonts, but there are problems with all the fonts I've tried.

[Yegor Fadeyev (yegorf)]

You can see in-paragraph problems on pages 2 (line 2), 17 (paragraph 3, line 6), 24 (paragraph 3, line 3) etc.

[Kovid Goyal (kovid)]

Update to 5.7.1

 status fixreleased

[Max Rocchi (absolut)]

Something still not working in the 5.7.1 release....

The same file, too big to be attached... :-(

The original epub

and the .pdf conversion (different font dimension, and some missing letters)

Here the log:

Max Rocchi
www.rocchi.org

> Il giorno 11 dic 2020, alle ore 16:08, Kovid Goyal <email address hidden> ha scritto:
>
> Update to 5.7.1
>
> status fixreleased
>
> ** Changed in: calibre
> Status: New => Fix Released
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to a
> duplicate bug report (1907675).
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1905967
>
> Title:
> Printing to PDF is unreadable
>
> Status in calibre:
> Fix Released
>
> Bug description:
> Calibre version: 5.6.0
> OS: Kubuntu 20.04
>
> If you open the attached EPUB in the viewer, and try to print it to
> PDF with default options, this will produce unreadable output. The
> letters in the words are misplaced (see page 2).
>
> For longer EPUBs, sometimes there is also a similar problem when
> running EPUB -> PDF conversion.
>
> The attached archive contains the EPUB causing the problem and my PDF
> output.
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/calibre/+bug/1905967/+subscriptions

[Michel Fortin (mirafort)]

I concur. The scrambling is less pronounced in 5.7.1 but still there at some places. Doesn't happen in 5.5.0.
I suggest to anyone for whom a pdf conversion is important to stay with 5.5.0.

[Brian Prager (bwp123)]

Agreed! 5.5 works like a charm for me. (PDF conversion IS important for
chapters and excerpts to give to students, and other uses where printed
form is preferable.)
Sincere thanks to all who gave this advice. It saved me.

On 12/11/2020 12:57 PM, Michel Fortin wrote:
> I concur. The scrambling is less pronounced in 5.7.1 but still there at some places. Doesn't happen in 5.5.0.
> I suggest to anyone for whom a pdf conversion is important to stay with 5.5.0.
>

[Kovid Goyal (kovid)]

Should be fine in the just released 5.7.2, apparently chromium has now
started generating PDF files in which the width arrays dont match the
actual glyph widths in the font. This is in contravention of the PDF
spec. I have now worked around it in calibre.

https://github.com/kovidgoyal/calibre/commit/e430bf331290fb788941e242481eac5906febb8a