[OS X TeX] missing symbols in mathptmx with pdftex

[Gary L. Gray]

On Jan 28, 2008, at 10:43 PM, Nathan Sanders wrote:

> Thanks for the reply (and also to Richard Koch for his off-list  
> reply).  I just updated Acrobat Reader to 8.1.1 and tried the same  
> PDF, and the summation symbol is still missing!  I've uploaded it to  
> the following URL:
>
> 	http://wso.williams.edu/~nsanders/missing-summation.pdf
>
> I'm beginning to think there is something broken in our TeX  
> distributions, since it seems to be happening only to us (and I did  
> the installation on both our computers).  I find it bizarre,  
> however, that the symbol is missing in Acrobat, but not in Skim or  
> Preview.  (I don't find it bizarre that pdftex is doing something  
> different than TeX+Ghostscript, of course!)
>
> The following is the console output that generates the bad PDF.  I  
> don't see anything unusual myself, but maybe someone more knowledge  
> can spot a problem:
>
>
> This is pdfTeX, Version 3.141592-1.40.3 (Web2C 7.5.6)
> \write18 enabled.
> entering extended mode
> (./foo.tex
> LaTeX2e <2005/12/01>
> Babel <v3.8h> and hyphenation patterns for english, german, ngerman,  
> spanish, f
> rench, italian, dutch, loaded.
> (/usr/local/gwTeX/texmf.texlive/tex/latex/base/article.cls
> Document Class: article 2005/09/16 v1.4f Standard LaTeX document class
> (/usr/local/gwTeX/texmf.texlive/tex/latex/base/size10.clo))
> (/usr/local/gwTeX/texmf.texlive/tex/latex/psnfss/mathptmx.sty) (./ 
> foo.aux)
> (/usr/local/gwTeX/texmf.texlive/tex/latex/psnfss/ot1ptm.fd)
> (/usr/local/gwTeX/texmf.texlive/tex/latex/psnfss/ot1ztmcm.fd)
> (/usr/local/gwTeX/texmf.texlive/tex/latex/psnfss/omlztmcm.fd)
> (/usr/local/gwTeX/texmf.texlive/tex/latex/psnfss/omsztmcm.fd)
> (/usr/local/gwTeX/texmf.texlive/tex/latex/psnfss/omxztmcm.fd) [1{/ 
> usr/local/gwT
> eX/texmf.local/fonts/map/pdftex/updmap/pdftex.map}] (./foo.aux) ){/ 
> usr/local/gw
> TeX/texmf.texlive/fonts/enc/dvips/base/8r.enc}</usr/local/gwTeX/ 
> texmf.texlive/f
> onts/type1/bluesky/cm/cmr10.pfb>
> Output written on foo.pdf (1 page, 4913 bytes).
> Transcript written on foo.log.
>
>
> Thanks!
> Nathan
>
>
> On Jan 28, 2008, at 10:18 PM, Gary L. Gray wrote:
>
>> On Jan 28, 2008, at 10:13 PM, Nathan Sanders wrote:
>>
>>> A friend of mine discovered that some math symbols do not show up  
>>> in Adobe Acrobat (v5.0, if it matters) for a PDF created by pdftex  
>>> using mathptmx.  The following minimal example illustrates the  
>>> problem:
>>>
>>>
>>> \documentclass{article}
>>> \usepackage{mathptmx}
>>> \begin{document}
>>>
>>> \[
>>>   \sum_{k=1}^{\infty}\frac{1}{k^2}
>>> \]
>>>
>>> \end{document}
>>>
>>>
>>> If this is run through pdftex and viewed in Acrobat, the summation  
>>> symbol is missing.  However, if dvips is used instead, or if the  
>>> pdftex PDF is viewed in another viewer (Preview, Skim, etc.),  
>>> everything is just fine.
>>>
>>> Is this a known issue with a known fix?  Preferably something  
>>> simple (my friend is not very TeX-handy) that allows him to use  
>>> mathptmx, pdftex, and Acrobat (to suit his various needs/wants)?
>>> ==========
>>>
>>> Can anyone else replicate this?  This only response I got on c.t.t  
>>> was from someone who couldn't replicate it with tetex.
>>>
>>> Any help would be greatly appreciated!
>>
>>
>> Under 10.5.1, the output from your code displays perfectly in  
>> Preview and Adobe Acrobat Professional 8.1.1. Sorry I couldn't be  
>> of more help, but has your friend tried a more recent version of  
>> Acrobat?


I am using TeXLive 2007 as installed by the MacTeX installer, so that  
is one difference, though my console output looks to be very similar.  
Since it is a missing character, it could be the dreaded corrupt font  
cache problem. You might try and grab something like Font Finagler or  
Font Nuke, delete all your font caches, and see if that fixes it. See:

http://homepage.mac.com/mdouma46/fontfinagler/

http://www.jamapi.com/pr/fn/

Good luck and let us know if deleting font caches fixes the problem.

By the way, you can install TeXLive 2007 with the MacTeX installer and  
you will be able to use either gwtex or TeXLive by switching  
distributions with the preference pane that gets installed.

Regards,
   Gary