The Great Apple PDF Update

MongooseMatt said:
Hey everyone,

We are currently in the process of going through all our past PDFs and updating them so they display properly on Apple devices. There is rather a lot of them (!), but we will be steadily working through every PDF with this problem. We will update this post as new ones are added on both our website and DrivethruRPG, listing all the revisions. Simply re-download and you will be good to go!

Updated so far:

Aliens of Charted Space Vol. 3
...
Click to expand...
Is the PDF of the Referee's Screen on your to-do list? Would very much appreciate an update off that too.
 
EDIT: Fixed at BoH and DriveThru as of May 13.

Be aware that the updated DriveThru JTAS 1-6 files are now borked for PDFKit where they were working fine yesterday. I do not have the official from Mongoose files but the Bundle of Holding for JTAS was just updated and the updated JTAS 1-6 files there are still borked. I presume these are similar to the direct from Mongoose versions.

!
 
Last edited:
I’ve had a message from Drivethrurpg that JTAS 1 to 6 are updated. I’ve downloaded but the front cover is a blank page. This is affecting all six issues. The cover looks blank when viewed from the Files app on iPadOS 17.4.1 or when saved to iBooks.

@MongooseMatt is there a workaround for this?

Cheers
 
EDIT: Fixed at DriveThru and BoH as of May 13. Looks fine.

About the time I reported this above, Allen with Bundle of Holding was told they will have it resolved Monday. I assume DriveThru will get updated once these are reprocessed.

The previous files as of yesterday worked fine from DriveThru and had last been modified in 2019/2020. if you have access to them.

If you are command-line friendly, there is a thread with a method of processing the files with GhostScript and pdftocairo. The PDF Squeezer method does not work with the JTAS files.

Solution to Traveller PDFs not showing images in PDFKit based renderers (macOS and iOS)

===================================================================================================== |👇👇👇THE METHOD IN THIS POST IS OUTDATED! PLEASE LOOK AT POSTS #31 AND #41 FOR THE BEST WAY 👇👇👇|...
forum.mongoosepublishing.com

!
 
Last edited:
Today I looked into my DTRPG library and, for the first time in a couple of weeks, there wasn't a big pile of fixed PDFs for me, waiting for me to download and I was strangely disconsolate.

The last couple of weeks have been a joy, downloading and reading through the books - seeing them the way they were supposed to be for the fist time. It has reaffirmed why I love Mongoose products so much. Thank you for all your work updating them. I appreciate you and the effort you put in.
 
MongooseMatt said:
Bundle of Holding automatically will. Humble Bundle uses its own system - we'll need to see what can be done there.
Click to expand...
Thanks for doing this.

I'm late to the party, but when I redownloaded my Bundle of Holding files, I checked the file size on the core rulebook and it is the same exact size as the one I originally downloaded in 2022. It doesn't look like Bundle of Holding has updated the files in my Wizard's Cabinet. I then checked Humble Bundle for that file and it comes in at the same size, which doesn't match the updated file from DrivethroughRPG. It was updated in Apr 2024 according to the file name.

BoH & HB file size for the core rulebook: 33,866
DTRPG file size for the core rulebook: 36,381

I didn't check all the files, but you might want to tag them again and see if they'll actually update the files this time. I can get most from DTRPG, but not all and I would like to get the updated files. As others mentioned, it would be very helpful if there was text in the files (like near the copyright statement) that had the date of revision. File names are great, but third parties might not update those and it can be very confusing.
 
Last edited:
Looks like Mongoose just pushed out new versions of JTAS 7-12 out to DriveThru. I assume this also happened on Mongoose's site.

With the exception of JTAS_-_Volume_10_May24 the blue cover art is missing. I think they need to do another round of processing or restore the previous versions from 2022 which I thought were fine. @MongooseMatt

!
 
Space Smurf said:
Also the 2300AD: Tools For Frontier Living PDF displays no cover when I open it in Preview or Skim on my Mac. When I open it with Chrome, the cover displays fine.
Click to expand...
The version on DriveThru is fine. I noted the recent Bundle of Holding for 2300AD did come with a bugged version of Tools For Frontier Living. And the bundle had a number of older versions of the PDFs sans errata but I find it hard to complain about that too much.

!
 
BangsNaughtyBits said:
The version on DriveThru is fine. I noted the recent Bundle of Holding for 2300AD did come with a bugged version of Tools For Frontier Living. And the bundle had a number of older versions of the PDFs sans errata but I find it hard to complain about that too much.

!
Click to expand...
Thanks for this info!
The Bundle of Holing is where I got my bugged PDF from. As the bundle also added the contents to my DriveThru library I was able do download the corrected version from there.
 
ProfGrizzlyJon said:
Is there a step by step explanation for how to fix this issue? I have encountered the same thing with my created content.
Click to expand...
On Mac? See

Solution to Traveller PDFs not showing images in PDFKit based renderers (macOS and iOS)

===================================================================================================== |👇👇👇THE METHOD IN THIS POST IS OUTDATED! PLEASE LOOK AT POSTS #31 AND #41 FOR THE BEST WAY 👇👇👇|...
forum.mongoosepublishing.com

and install the Ghostscript and or Cairo apps. Don't use the first command line shown, the better GhostScrip command line is down the first page.

If you don't have weird gray backgrounds that should be image transperancies, GhostScript is going to leave the PDF otherwise intact. If you have transparency issues, then several pages in the Cairo option makes everything look great, but there are issues with PDF size and it rips out the bookmarks and hot links.

And there is also the PDF Squeeze app which is discussed in the thread and runs US$20.

EDIT: These are the command lines to process the files. You have to be in the directory of the source file or I guess type in the full path to the files. It's easier to just be in the correct directory. I enclose all the file name in "QUOTATION MARKS" so spaces and other weirdnbess do not cause problems and I suggest you keep the file names in quotes as well.

So once you get Brew installed to Install either GhostScript or Cairo or both, you can use these commands.

gs -sColorConversionStrategy=sRGB -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -dNOCACHE -dPDFSETTINGS=/printer -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile="The New PDF.pdf" "The Old PDF.pdf"

or

pdftocairo -pdf "The Old PDF.pdf" "The New PDF.pdf"

!
 
Last edited:
MongooseMatt said:
If anyone is still having an issue with any files, let us know!
Click to expand...
The 2300AD Aerospace Engineers' Handbook PDF on DriveThru has the issue, though I cannot speak to the Mongoose official PDF. The version provided on Bundle of Holding seemed fine. It wasn't the current errata level, though. Most files in that bundle were older errata.

!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

MongooseMatt
Core Rulebook Update 2022 - New Printing, New Cover!
2 3
Replies
42
Views
2K
MongooseMatt
MongooseMatt
Yenaldlooshi
Aug '24 Errata for Core Update 2022: Do we need an Errata to the Errata or am I not getting page 159?
Replies
2
Views
368
Jame Rowe
J
M
Darrian Aslan stat bonuses - errata?
Replies
5
Views
298
Grognardia
Grognardia
apastuszak
Are we done with the "update" books?
4 5 6
Replies
101
Views
8K
tytalan
T
T
Mystery of the ancients
Replies
5
Views
581
PeterFdH
P
Back
Top