How does your screenplay as a PDF look on a tablet?

[Randall_Oelerich]

EDIT: SOLVED.
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Ever looked at your PDF screenplay on a tablet? I have figured out that a PDF generated by Final Draft (I have the latest ver 8; did this using FD8 built in Courier Final Draft 12 font) looks mangled and funked, readable but horribly messed up character spacing and font, when viewed on either an android tablet or an ipad. Looks fine on a PC, just not on tablets. In contrast, I have figured out that a PDF generated by Movie Magic or Trelby looks fine on a tablet (not as good as when viewed on a PC, but far more viewable than a FD generated PDF seen on a tablet). Curious if others have tried this? I suspect many writers using FD are emailing and uploading PDFs of their screenplays, which could get passed on if initially viewed by agents/prodcos as they use their tablet pc to attempt to read such a spec; not good.

 

[j1clark@ucsd.edu]

Ever looked at your PDF screenplay on a tablet?

Since I don't have FD... I'll pontificate on general principles... there are several ways that a 'font' can be embedded, or not, in a PDF. What this sounds like is that FD does not embed their Courier-FD, into the PDF, then when that file is opened by someone, somewhere, who does not have the Courier-FD font... the font is substitute with 'something else'...

Here's a blurb on how to check if the font is embedded or not.

http://blogs.mtu.edu/gradschool/2010/04/27/how-to-determine-if-fonts-are-embedded/

 

[Randall_Oelerich]

Since I don't have FD... I'll pontificate on general principles... there are several ways that a 'font' can be embedded, or not, in a PDF. What this sounds like is that FD does not embed their Courier-FD, into the PDF, then when that file is opened by someone, somewhere, who does not have the Courier-FD font... the font is substitute with 'something else'...

Here's a blurb on how to check if the font is embedded or not.

http://blogs.mtu.edu/gradschool/2010/04/27/how-to-determine-if-fonts-are-embedded/

Adobe Reader says that the Courier Final Draft font is embedded in the PDF, but then when viewed on a tablet it is messed up (see the uneven kerning/spacing between characters/letters?), as seen in this small snippet from a screen capture of the pdf on my friend's ipad. I am just wanting to get to the bottom of this, seems like this could be a new issue with tablets.

 

[Randall_Oelerich]

What is messed up about all this is that no matter how funky the font looks in the PDF generated from FD, the title page and only the title page of that resulting PDF looks just beautiful, perfect, perfect courier font, perfect black density-- so why the frack isn't FD doing that for the entire PDF?!? Solve this riddle and there will be a balance of the forces in the universe once again.

Also, fwiw, I was able to have FD change the font to Courier New, then the resulting PDF indeed looks like courier, not the best courier mind you but readable as courier without the funking kerning/spacing between letters; and also, again with a beautiful title page in some other courier font that is just gorgeous.

 

[Randall_Oelerich]

SOLVED !!!!

Finally, defeated this fricken beast, am able to make beautiful PDF from FD where the font in the entire script and title page is Courier Final Draft, nice dark (not bold) courier, perfect kerning. 'Print'ed screenplay using PDFCreator, used advanced options and chose 150dpi (not sure that is a game changer) and what I think was most important was that I chose PDFCreator option of SoftFont automatic download instead of default option of using font already on device. Geesh, the steps you have to go through to have a truly portable PDF across devices. But the resulting PDF looks gorgeous even on my Android tablet in addition of course to my PC.

EDIT: image attached here of PDFCreator settings I am using. Notice dpi, and 'Download as Softfont'. So I choose the font in Final Draft, etc., then go to FILErint. I choose PDFCreator as the 'printer' (free download if you do not have it, go get it). Then from the PDFCreator popup dialog I choose Properties, Paper Quality=Black/White (not color, but I doubt this would matter as a screenplay is all black and white anyhow), and in the Advanced settings I choose Graphic Quality: 150dpi, and for TrueType Font I click to deselect the default to use font on device and instead choose Download as Softfont. Then click the OK button and not the 'Print to PDF' button. I repeat, do not click the Print to PDF button (i know seems like you would want to do that, but if I recall that makes this method *not* work as planned).

I have tried this now in Final Draft using the Courier Final Draft font, and also the beautiful Courier Movie Magic font. In both cases, the resulting PDF using this method shows up beautifully on my Android tablet.