Error when loading PDF that uses system fonts

Test file: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16283445/PORTRAIT.pdf

File was produced by Muhimbi PDF converter.

Main text (that uses embedded Tahoma font) renders ok; it is the trial message on top of the file that causes the error. After some debugging, I’ve found that this message references system Helvetica font, and somehow glyphs for it are missing at the time of error.

Error log:

Error: Requesting object that isn't resolved yet Helvetica_path_T pdf.js:205
    at error (http://[skipped]/pdfjs/pdf.js:207:15)
    at Object.PDFObjects_get [as get] (http://[skipped]/pdfjs/pdf.js:4640:9)
    at Object.FontFace.getPathGenerator (http://[skipped]/pdfjs/pdf.js:7675:23)
    at Object.CanvasGraphics.paintChar (http://[skipped]/pdfjs/pdf.js:6105:26)
    at Object.CanvasGraphics_showText [as showText] (http://[skipped]/pdfjs/pdf.js:6291:18)
    at Object.CanvasGraphics_nextLineShowText [as nextLineShowText] (http://[skipped]/pdfjs/pdf.js:6381:12)
    at Object.CanvasGraphics_executeOperatorList [as executeOperatorList] (http://[skipped]/pdfjs/pdf.js:5600:22)
    at Object.InternalRenderTask__next [as _next] (http://[skipped]/pdfjs/pdf.js:4807:39)
    at Object.pdfViewcContinueCallback [as continueCallback] (http://[skipped]/pdfjs/viewer.js:4261:9)

[timvandermeij]

This one bug renders the whole library useless.

That’s not really true since the vast majority of PDF files simply embed their fonts (or a subset), in which case there is no problem at all. In fact, that’s highly recommended everywhere, also in the PDF specification, since it ensures that PDF files render consistently across viewers and platforms. By not embedding (a subset of the) fonts you simply cannot assume that the file will look correctly in all viewers, so that’s taking a risk.

the lack of commitment for a fix is frustrating

You have to realize that this is not a trivial issue, and in the meantime work has been done to investigate how we can resolve this. There is a pull request just above (#12726) that aims to provide an implementation for this. While not completely done yet, there is effort being put into this.

If you think this issue deserves more attention, use the thumbs up emoji on the original comment so it shows up higher in the priority list (see https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js/issues?q=is%3Aissue+sort%3Areactions-%2B1-desc+is%3Aclosed for issues that have been solved that also had a high number of thumbs up), but please keep comments constructive at all times.

[janumedia]

with pdfjs-dist": "^2.2.2 set disableFontFace: false fixed this issue on me.

pdfjs.getDocument( { url: pdfUrl, disableFontFace: false, }