Foreign symbols not showing up when exporting to pdf in Draw, despite corret font being installed

AnimatedFreak · December 16, 2019, 8:01am

Hello, I couldn’t quite find anyone else with the same issue as me. Only similar once so I’m asking here. I am trying to edit a pdf file that uses the font century gothic std. It’s a Swedish document so it uses the Swedish symbols Å Ä Ö. It’s the standard font that the company I work for uses so I of course I have installed. I’ve edited with the font using other programs on my computer such as Scribus and it works fine. And the Swedish shows up on LibreOffice in the correct font. However, when I’ve done my editing and export it into another pdf all the Swedish symbols goes away.

I’m running Kubuntu and the my font manager says I have the font installed as well as the italic and bold version. When I open the font in the preview I can see the Swedish symbols are there so they are not missing (they work in other programs after all).
When doing
fc-match CenturyGothicStd
in the terminal it returns
Century_Gothic_Std_Regular.otf: “Century Gothic Std” “Regular”
Meaning it’s suppose to be installed

I feel like I’ve run out of options, I don’t know what to do at this point.
I really need this font to work as it would allow me to do basic text editing to labels that our company uses for it’s products. Right now we have to send it over to a graphic designer just to get some basic text changed or ad a QR code. If I could do that with LibreOffice draw it would make our work so much faster. Other than this font issue everything I need LibreOffice to do it does great!

anon73440385 · December 16, 2019, 11:24am

Hello - your are editing a PDF in Draw and re-exporting again to PDF. To narrow down your problem: What happens, if you edit a Writer Document using the century gothic std font and save that file to PDF? Does it also make the swedish characters to disappear?

AnimatedFreak · December 16, 2019, 12:04pm

Hello
Yes I am editing a PDF and re-exporting them. I tried what you did and I had the same problem. The Swedish characters disappear. Seems like the problem is for all Libreoffice applications.

anon73440385 · December 16, 2019, 4:37pm

Hmm - got a version of Century Gothic font (which may not be yours) and got no problem to export Å to pdf. Now it really comes to the unavoidable questions:

Which version of LibreOffice do you use?
Which Operating system?
Where did you get your font from?

AnimatedFreak · December 17, 2019, 11:48am

Hello sorry for the delay. The version I’m using is the one I got from my companies local files that we all use. Would you mind telling me where you got your version?
I’m running version 6.3.3.2 of Libreoffice and it’s build id is 1:6.3.3-0ubuntu0.19.10.1
The OS I’m using is Kubuntu 19.10 which is a official flavor of Ubuntu but with the KDE desktop.
Thank you in advance.

AnimatedFreak · December 17, 2019, 12:32pm

Hello! It seems I have solved my issue. First I went and found the font on another source. This one was just namned Century gothic not century gothic std (it didn’t have the std part in its name) I then installed that one along with the bold, italic and bold italic versions. I then went to Tools > Options > Fonts and added a replacement where it replaced the old font Centrury Gothic STD with the new one I downloaded just called Centrury Gothic. I made just to check the “always” box and now I can edit in Swedish characters and export them to new PDF with no problems. My guess is the one I had from our company must be broken or something.
Thank you so very much for your help, I never would’ve thought about looking for another source of the font had you not told me that you manage to make it work.
Now I can convince my boss that we don’t need a illustator license for basic text editing for our product labes lol.

Hrbrgr · December 16, 2019, 11:26am

In Draw, go to the File>Properties... menu.
In the “Properties of” dialog box, in the “Font” tab, check "Embed fonts > Embed fonts in the document".

And with “Embed fonts used only in documents”.

Attention: Embedding could slow down the processing of the odg file.

AnimatedFreak · December 16, 2019, 12:05pm

Hello, I tried your solution with all different tabs checked and unchecked. but I had the same problem with all of them when exporting, so it didn’t solve the issue I have.

Hrbrgr · December 16, 2019, 12:23pm

Draw is not the best solution to edit PDF files.

If you want a clean worflow, you should build your original as an ODG. This should always remain the source.

Then you can export it as a PDF (without further editing).

That’s how I would work.

AnimatedFreak · December 17, 2019, 12:36pm

It seems I have solved my issue. First I went and found the font on another source. This one was just namned Century gothic not century gothic std (it didn’t have the std part in its name) I then installed that one along with the bold, italic and bold italic versions. I then went to Tools > Options > Fonts and added a replacement where it replaced the old font Centrury Gothic STD with the new one I downloaded just called Centrury Gothic. I made just to check the “always” box and now I can edit in Swedish characters and export them to new PDF with no problems. My guess is the one I had from our company must be broken or something.
I’ll like to thank the LibreOffice community for helping me out with my trouble.