
Edge displays “123456” in PDF but prints “114447” - noxin
https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/platform/issues/11896203/
======
danso
Just in case you don't click through, the bug submitter refers to a color PDF
(not a scan, so image compression artifacts are not an issue) that is similar
in appearance to a periodic table. That is, it is not the sequence of `123456`
that is mistranslated into `114447`, but a sequence of 6 table cells, each
containing a single digit.

It's not just the numbers that are misprinted, but the text inside those cells
too, which suggests that Edge's PDF engine is re-rendering the original PDF,
rather than printing the original PDF as is, which I thought was the entire
point of using PDF in the first place.

But maybe this is an edge case? In the sense that Microsoft assumes that given
a PDF file, if a user wants to "Print to PDF", the user should just _save_ the
PDF file. "Print to PDF" is ostensibly used to convert HTML/DOC into PDF
format.

~~~
saurik
As someone who works in PDFs constantly (due to work in local government), I
would say the point of a PDF is to be able to reproduce the result given a
file, not to assume the file cannot be changed... you can easily edit and save
PDF files using Acrobat, for example.

It is common that when you "print to PDF" you take the output of the printer
and serialize that to PDF. I use this feature often on my Mac (which I think
many would claim has excellent support for dealing with PDF files) to build a
PDF that is stripped of any interactive forms: so as to get an output which is
_only_ the PDF "as printed".

~~~
jdmichal
Absolutely right. PDF fixes the problem Word documents have where different
versions of Word tends to render the document ever so differently. Usually in
a way that seems to mess up all those beautiful page breaks you meticulously
planned. It does this by every element having absolute positioning.

~~~
MichaelGG
And is the scourge of every paper I want to read on my Kindle. Everyone
publishes their PDFs and there seems to be no reliable way to reflow them.

~~~
r00fus
Which is why ePub and other digital book formats exist. I'm glad there is a
format that prioritizes WYSIWYG over reflow (though the part of the spec where
the introduced scripting is a bit dodgy)

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nom
The PDF "format" never fails to amuse me. Check out the talk "OMG WTF PDF" [0]
from the 27. Chaos Communication Congress, it's eye opening.

0: [https://media.ccc.de/v/27c3-4221-en-
omg_wtf_pdf](https://media.ccc.de/v/27c3-4221-en-omg_wtf_pdf)

~~~
tjalfi
You would probably like the James Mickens video "Life As A Developer: My Code
Does Not Work Because I Am A Victim Of Complex Societal Factors That Are
Beyond My Control"[0]. He starts talking about the Adobe PDF reader at 19:30.

[0] [https://vimeo.com/180568023](https://vimeo.com/180568023)

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faragon
This reminds me JBIG2 compression errors... [1]

[1]
[https://abbyy.technology/en:kb:tip:jbig2_compression_and_ocr](https://abbyy.technology/en:kb:tip:jbig2_compression_and_ocr)

~~~
bloaf
Hence the joke in the bug report.

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dualogy
Well.. 1+2+3+4+5+6 == 1+1+4+4+4+7 --- a bug with a sense for 'numerology'!

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EliRivers
This reminds me of that photocopier that changed the numbers it was copying
sometimes, through a dodgy image compression algorithm.

~~~
ungzd
Link: [http://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-
workcentres_...](http://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-
workcentres_are_switching_written_numbers_when_scanning)

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cmurf
The PDF goes through different rendering paths for display vs print. It's GDI+
for display, and WPF with an XPS spool file for print. So my guess is whatever
does PDF to XPS filtering/conversion is getting something wrong; but then it
could be complicated by an addtitional bug in the print driver which is why
the report says the bug depends on what printer is used for printing.

~~~
reacweb
printing to pdf should be independent of printer.

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askvictor
I've had similar issues with chrome's PDF viewer where it displays one number,
but if I copy paste, it shows a different number.

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wdr1
I wonder if it's related to when Xerox copiers changed numbers?

[http://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-
workcentres_...](http://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-
workcentres_are_switching_written_numbers_when_scanning)?

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hoodoof
x

~~~
rileytg
you're missing the joke

~~~
rileytg
and ur hiding it

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steipete
Maybe we really should bring [https://pdfviewer.io](https://pdfviewer.io) to
Windows. Looks like the default app is somewhat crap :P

~~~
Sunset
Why doesn't everyone use FoxitPDF in $current_year ?

~~~
colejohnson66
What about SumatraPDF?

~~~
jungletek
IMO, the far superior option.

