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Font problem when printing from Firefox on macOS 10.14.3

  • 6 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 40 views
  • Last reply by XiaYang

XiaYang
XiaYang
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I'm having trouble printing from Firefox 65.0.2 under macOS 10.14.3. Documents are displayed correctly in the browser, but when I'm trying to print, the fonts are substituted by garble (see image below), no matter if I send it to a physical printer, print to pdf or just open it in preview. I've tried following all the steps in https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/fix-printing-problems-firefox, and even done a clean reinstall -- to no avail.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I'd really prefer not to have to go back to using Safari ;-(

I'm having trouble printing from Firefox 65.0.2 under macOS 10.14.3. Documents are displayed correctly in the browser, but when I'm trying to print, the fonts are substituted by garble (see image below), no matter if I send it to a physical printer, print to pdf or just open it in preview. I've tried following all the steps in https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/fix-printing-problems-firefox, and even done a clean reinstall -- to no avail. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I'd really prefer not to have to go back to using Safari ;-(

All Replies (6)

XiaYang
XiaYang Question owner
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Sorry, image didn't go through the first time. Here it is:

WestEnd
WestEnd
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What is the site?

jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
  • Top 25 Contributor
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Hi XiaYang, that particular example is a PDF. Firefox's built-in PDF viewer sometimes has problems with fonts specified in PDFs, so in case of any odd behavior, it is better to open the PDF in Apple's Preview app or in Adobe Reader and print from there instead. You can use the Download button on the viewer's black toolbar:

Of course, that trick doesn't apply to regular web pages. Is there also a problem with web pages?

XiaYang
XiaYang Question owner
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Dear jscher2000, what you suggest is a helpful workaround, thank you very much.

I have in the meantime been able to narrow down the problem a bit: the issue appears to occur only with pdf files that were generated using LaTeX, whereas websites and other types of pdfs seem to print just fine. I tried with a bunch of randomly selected papers from arxiv.org as well as some of my own LaTeX papers on the local hard disk, and none of them print correctly, so it's unlikely that it is just related to a particular LaTeX template.

I'm a bit surprised though that the Firefox pdf viewer should have a problem with something as ubiquitous as standard LaTeX fonts...

jscher2000 said

Hi XiaYang, that particular example is a PDF. Firefox's built-in PDF viewer sometimes has problems with fonts specified in PDFs, so in case of any odd behavior, it is better to open the PDF in Apple's Preview app or in Adobe Reader and print from there instead. You can use the Download button on the viewer's black toolbar: Of course, that trick doesn't apply to regular web pages. Is there also a problem with web pages?

Modified by XiaYang

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
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Print Preview with this PDF file is working fine here on Linux.

Your Print Preview screenshot shows characters in the PUA (Private Use Area; E000-E8FF) code block that is usually reserved for downloaded fonts. If I check the font used in the PDF viewer (tab) then I see font-family: sans-serif; as inline CSS code.

XiaYang
XiaYang Question owner
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Thank you cor-el. Indeed, when I open the file in Firefox's PDF viewer, I get the same "font-family: sans-serif" information, and the document displays correctly.

But when I try to print or save as pdf, it somehow fails to properly embed the LaTeX fonts. The resulting pdf is huge (80MB vs the normal 4MB), and Adobe Acrobat tells me that the only embedded font is Times-Roman (missing a long list of embedded LaTeX fonts compared to the original pdf). Not sure if this information helps.

I've also tried reinstalling my LaTeX distribution from scratch, but that didn't help either.