The following error message can sometimes appear while encountering this issue: “Note: some or all of the text in this document is in a non-standard encoding and may not search or copy properly”.
On Windows 2000 and newer, if an application + PCL printer driver chooses to download fonts, they do not assign ASCII characters to the standard (ASCII) encoded values. They assign the first letter they download to 1, the next to 2, etc. So, if ‘A’ is the first letter used in the font, it might be 1 instead of the standard 65. However, since the downloaded fonts match their use in the file, it’s totally readable and printable – just not searchable or selectable. Print drivers on win95/98 simply offset the standard ASCII numbers in downloaded bitmap fonts by a small constant value, and we can compensate for that. Unfortunately there is nothing we can currently do with files created with encoding that is completely scrambled.
To Resolve This Issue:
- Create the source file with a font native to the print driver. Will also make the converted file smaller.
- Print your files on win95/98 instead of 2000/XP/2k3. Be sure to select “Download TrueType fonts as Bitmap soft fonts”, as SwiftView cannot currently unscramble outline soft fonts.
- Use a different font in the source documents. Word documents using TrueType fonts scramble, while non-TT fonts are fine.