Opening PDF defaults to LibreOffice Draw which shifts elements due to weird margins

Jumbriac · January 24, 2024, 6:30pm

I use LibreOffice for school and have often opened PDF documents like this homework.pdf (270.6 KB). They look normal when viewed in the PDF editor in Firefox, but when opening through the File > Open menu in the LibreOffice Application the document is loaded with mismatched margins, and sections of text get smushed together like shown below

I am running Arch Linux with the i3 WM, and am using the default version of LibreOffice that is provided by pacman, which I update weekly.
Any help/suggestions would be appreciated, thank you!

ajlittoz · January 24, 2024, 6:42pm

Draw is not a PDF viewer. Consequently, it is likely it does not follow all procedures a decent PDF viewer applies. Draw is a graphics handling program and focuses on graphical object like shapes or text boxes without consideration for “details” such as embedded fonts which make no sense in its purpose.

What you see is a mismatch between the fonts needed by the document and those installed on your computer.

On my computer (Fedora 39, KDE Plasma desktop, Firefox 121.0.1, LO 7.6.4.1), your sample file renders OK in Firefox or Okular (the KDE PDF viewer). I incur the same distortion when the file in opened in Draw. Displaying the font properties in Okular lists cryptic font names like FCFKNI+CMM12. I can’t tell which font family is needed to fix the issue.

Display and print your PDF with a PDF viewer.

Grantler · January 24, 2024, 6:50pm

Your sample file was produced on pdfTex-1.40.23 according to file properties. LibreOffice Draw is not the adequate app for editing. Try Inkscape (version higher than 1 - see version 1.3.2 on screenshot) - the result for opening the pdf file is a charm (in relation to LO Draw).
.

EarnestAl · January 24, 2024, 6:54pm

Draw is a graphics program that can open pdf but does not use embedded fonts. A dedicated pdf viewer can normally display the pdf using embedded fonts

You might like to set up some font substitutions in LibreOffice, this recent question might help, Replacing Microsoft Fonts

Wanderer · January 24, 2024, 7:36pm

Together with the picture @Grantler provided one piece is obviously the cm= computer modern “family” Donald Knuth created for TeX. As the software produced nearly identical output on different devices nearly 40 years ago, in times where a lot of computers still used 8+3 filenames the names are often cryptic.

EarnestAl · January 24, 2024, 9:28pm

The fonts are all Type 1 fonts which are no longer supported in LibreOffice. You will need to add to the font substitution table, even if you have these fonts installed. If you can find ttf, otf or other supported versions of the fonts with the same name then it might work

Wanderer · January 24, 2024, 10:08pm

As the thread-starter did not create the pdf, it may be to much work to find out the possible sources…
.
I remember Fontforge having the ability to extract partial fonts, but unless one wishes to change anything in the pdf, I’d suggest to use other programs than Draw to display the file(s) - some were already named above.

https://fontforge.org/docs/appendices/ff-history.html

Jumbriac · January 24, 2024, 10:51pm

Thank you all for such informative and timely responses! I’ll try using Inkscape going forward for editing functionality.