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# Characters missing from PDF output

If you're using *Acrobat Distiller* to create your PDF output, you may find characters missing. This may manifest itself as messed-up maths equations (missing "-" signs, for example), or bits missing from large symbols. Early versions of `Distiller` used to ignore character positions 0--31 and 128--159 of every font : Adobe's fonts never use such positions, so why should `Distiller` ?

Well, the answer to this question is "because Adobe don't produce all the world's fonts" --- fonts like `Computer` `Modern` were around before Adobe came on the scene, and *they* use positions 0--31. Adobe don't react to complaints like that in the previous sentence, but they do release new versions of their programs; and `Distiller`, since at least version 4.0, *has* recognised the font positions it used to shun.

Meanwhile, TeX users with old versions of `Distiller` need to deal with their fonts. `Dvips` comes to our aid : the switch `-G1` ("remap characters"), which moves the offending characters out of the way. The PDF configuration file (`-Ppdf`), recommended in "[the wrong type of fonts](faquk:FAQ-fuzzy-type3), includes the switch.

The switch is not without its problems; pre-2003 versions of `dvips` will apply it to Adobe fonts as well, causing [havoc](faquk:FAQ-charshift), but fortunately that problem is usually soluble. However, a document using both CM and Adobe-specified fonts is stuck. The only real solution is either to upgrade `dvips`, or to spend money to upgrade `Distiller`.

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[Characters missing from PDF output](faquk:FAQ-distill-prob)
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