I'm using Ubuntu 18.04 and filling out the SS-5 Social Security Administration form. However, some of the letters are wrongly positioned.
Evince 3.28.2-1:
Okular 1.3.3 (Ubuntu version 4:17.12.3-0ubuntu1):
xpdf 3.04-7:
mudpdf 1.12.0:
The built-in PDF reader for Firefox 59.0.2:
The built-in PDF reader for Chromium 65.0.3325.181:
Here is the output of pdffonts:
$ pdffonts ss-5.pdfname type encoding emb sub uni object ID------------------------------------ ----------------- ---------------- --- --- --- ---------IHPIKC+ArialMT CID TrueType Identity-H yes yes yes 824 0ArialMT TrueType WinAnsi no no no 826 0Arial-BoldMT TrueType WinAnsi no no no 828 0CourierStd Type 1 WinAnsi no no no 145 0Helvetica Type 1 WinAnsi no no no 197 0MyriadPro-Regular Type 1 WinAnsi no no no 198 0ZapfDingbats Type 1 ZapfDingbats no no no 199 0I have already installed the ttf-mscorefonts-installer and poppler-data packages.
Here are my questions:
Can I change the font used for filling in the cells of the form?
It seems like Evince and xpdf are using a variable-width font when they should be using a monospaced font, and maybe this is causing the positioning problem.
If I were to file a bug report, should I file it as a poppler issue, a fontconfig issue, or somewhere else?
Update: bug reports:
Edit: The workaround from @xiota is perfectly functional. However, this is still a bug in poppler, because when the PDF viewer substitutes a different font due to the original not being embedded, the spacing in the XFA form should match the substituted font, not the original font. There is a pull request to fix this that is currently in progress. Poppler developer Tobias Deiminger (@haxtibal) described the approach in a different bug report:
The strategy there is, if a font is not embedded, gather and use metrics fromthe actual substitute font instead of metrics from PDF font descriptor orhardcoded ones.
