The Deep and the Dark - on PDF and Pre-Order

I d/l'd the pdf to my Galaxy A7 tablet and the cover page is blank on that device, if that helps any.
 
The Canterbury Tail said:
On the iPad (GoodReader) I'm missing a lot of images in this. For instance all the aliens have their drop shadows, but not their actual images. For other images, it's about a 50/50 chance it's just missing. Is this still a problem with no solution?
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So far we've not heard back from Team Goose. But it's the weekend and I didn't even report issues with it until near close of business of Friday. I'd look more towards Tuesday for them to have something concrete.
 
The Canterbury Tail said:
On the iPad (GoodReader) I'm missing a lot of images in this. For instance all the aliens have their drop shadows, but not their actual images. For other images, it's about a 50/50 chance it's just missing. Is this still a problem with no solution?
Click to expand...
I really, really wish Mongoose would consider Apple platforms to be 'support or die' (and no, Apple is not a 'moving target'; a .pdf that does not render correctly under PDFKit fails to meet the PDF spec). But until they do, the cantrip posted here unfucks their .pdfs.
 
I have to wait till the end of this week to get this title. I'm looking forward to it. Presumably, any problems arising this weekend should be corrected by then.
 
G'Naakbusters said:
Including a directory of Aslan clans, which we've long needed, I think (and will definitely be useful when you need to create Aslan characters or add some politics to an Aslan encounter -- and what is an Aslan encounter without clan politics?).
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It is worth noting that the original manuscript for this book was massive, and way too much to fit into one volume. However, it is all good and so we actually removed quite a bit of Aslan material (it leaned a bit hard into the Aslan in general rather than being sector-specific), and are currently planning to use that material as the basis of a new Clans of the Aslan book...
 
ottarrus said:
So I don't know if anyone has had a problem with this but my pdf of TD&D's cover was really scrambled... like a 3d picture that doesn't fully resolve into focus. Image included. The rest of the document is fine, only the cover is bugged up.
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What reader are you using? We have not been able to replicate this...
 
CordwainerFish said:
I really, really wish Mongoose would consider Apple platforms to be 'support or die' (and no, Apple is not a 'moving target'; a .pdf that does not render correctly under PDFKit fails to meet the PDF spec). But until they do, the cantrip posted here unfucks their .pdfs.
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Haha, I like the idea of good old OSS *nix solutions being seen as cantrips 😂 @ottarrus, @OriginalCaruso, @AndrewW, you might actually want to try said Ghostscript 'cantrip' as it may solve whatever issues your are experiencing with the PDF. Just be aware that it is not a lvl20 spell, and that you may see some transparent grey boxes around images that should normally have a transparency mask. (If I am remembering correctly W11 can now install a Linux subsystem, so you should be able to get this going somehow.)

But given that it are now Windows 3rd party readers for once that are also having issues (while, surprise surprise, Acrobat Reader miraculously doesn't) shows you that a) these issues are not isolated to Apple's PDFKit framework and b) what an absolute cluster*bad word* the PDF spec has become due to Adobe's shenanigans with a supposedly open standard and how you quickly run into issues if you start straying outside the ISO PDF/A-2 norm*.

*Adherence to which is what every publisher, including our dear Mongoose, should strive for btw, as it is meant to make PDFs long-term archival-ready by eschewing the sort of proprietary and incompatible malarkey that Adobe keeps jamming into their implementation.
 
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Timolution said:
But given that it are now Windows 3rd party readers for once that are also having issues (while, surprise surprise, Acrobat Reader miraculously doesn't) shows you that a) these issues are not isolated to Apple's PDFKit framework and b) what an absolute cluster*bad word* the PDF spec has become due to Adobe's shenanigans with a supposedly open standard and how you quickly run into issues if you start straying outside the ISO PDF/A norm*.
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Not on a windoze system at all here.
 
AndrewW said:
Not on a windoze system at all here.
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Apologies, was not familiar with this software and hence wrongfully assumed. But if you are on a *nix system you should have no problem trying the ghostscript bandaid solution I suppose?

But overall, the issue is just that the PDFs are not compliant to any of the ISO PDF/A subtypes, which you can easily check yourself with veraPDF if you want. So issues with 3rd party readers are generally inevitable in that case, be they Windows or any of the *nix flavours (including macOS). 🤷‍♂️
 
Timolution said:
Haha, I like the idea of good old OSS *nix solutions being seen as cantrips
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Well, it is a one liner, sorta. Though I made it into a shell function to automatically generate a destination filename - and just to be pedantic added a check to complain if the file wasn't claiming to be a .pdf. So seven lines added to .zshrc .
 
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