Labels text in PDF

[Ben Rubinstein]

Hi David,

I had some related - not identical - problems a little while ago - see emails 
from Mark Waddingham on this list, 13/05/2026.

Short form is that at least for my problems, setting the font explicitly on 
the fields where I was having issues, sorted them.

Mark suggests as a default setting an explicit font (and Arial I think is 
fine) at the stack level.

Caveat: from his explanation, which I very nearly understood, this may be a 
Mac-specific issue. If you're not on Mac, this may be of no use to you.

(One of the diagnostics was that if I used Print Card to Preview or Save to 
PDF in the IDE, it worked fine; the issues were only seen when I using 
explicit code similar to what you detail below.)

HTH,

Ben

I used to have a Hitchhiker's Guide towel.

On 22/07/2026 13:19, David V Glasgow via use-livecode wrote:
> Hi folks,
> 
> Sadly, I have no Douglas Adams anecdotes, other than the joy of reading his books and listening in my bedsit to the first Hitchhikers broadcast  in 1978.
> 
> However, I do have a good old fashioned LiveCode question...
> 
> I have a card featuring closely packed label fields (arial) and other controls.  The only ‘product’ of the app was for some time capturing a PNG to the clipboard.  Then a user requested a save to PDF feature.  I thought this would be quick and easy, only to discover that the PDF rendered had many missing words in the label fields.  The text missing looks pretty random, not just cropped at left or right of the field.  It is also consistent, so same words missing on each execution, and weirdly also only whole words, as far as I can see.
> 
> The code I have previously had success with on a card with very similarly tightly packed  controls is
> 
> put the defaultfolder into toldfold
> 
> set the cursor to busy
> 
> set the defaultfolder to it
> 
> set the printPaperOrientation to "landscape"
> 
> put the printPaperRectangle into trect
> 
> set the cursor to busy
> 
> put the "TSI Scores " & the long date & ".pdf" into tfilename
> 
> open printing to pdf tfilename
> 
> if the result is "Cancel" then exit mouseup
> 
> print card 1 into 8,8,830,540
> 
> print break
> 
> print card 2 into 8,8,830,540
> 
> close printing -- send group of cards to printer
> 
> set the defaultfolder to toldfold
> 
> 
> 
> The only difference I can see is that the problem only arises with respect to the card containing label fields.  The above works fine with very tightly packed buttons with labels.
> 
> In the end, to get it done in time for a meeting,  I kludged a temporary page containing a snapshot of the card and printed to PDF from that.  Not really what I wanted.  I will probably have some time to wrestle with this next month - so is there another solution to the problem, or am I just expecting too much of the print to PDF rendering process?
> 
> Cheers
> 
> David G
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