Pinyin in pdfs

[cwabbott]

Hello chinmoza,

Thank you for the suggestion. We are looking at ways to display the pinyin with a different font inside the Lesson Notes PDF.

Hello jaredh,

Thank you for posting the steps you took to fix the font issue you had with the PDF.

Hello tiger,

Thank you for the suggestion. We are actively looking at how to improve the PDFs. Most likely the Lesson Notes and Lesson Notes Lite will never look the same in quality because of the different processes used to create them (and intended for different users). Since the content is the same in both PDFs, we hope that you will be able to study the lesson with one or the other until we can make any potential improvements.

Thank you all for your feedback!

[jacko]

I see I am not the only one to experience this problem. I hope a fix is found soon as I definitively need the pinyin to be able to follow along what is being said. (This problem does not exist on the competitor's site, though, I have to say.)

The Adobe Reader version I currently have is 8.1.4 . I have updated both the traditional and simplified version of the Chinese characters when prompted to do so. These versions of Hanzi display normally, but the pinyin remains illegible. Using Preview with my Mac provides a blank page or empty squares. I'd be grateful to have a working version of each pdf for Preview as well eventually.

Besides, clicking on a link to see the notes takes forever to display a page on your site within Safari 4. Was the same with Safari 3 with the Japanese pdf.

I see the tech is aware of the problem and trying to find a solution. Once a solution has been found or before, it would be useful to have a warning displaying on the welcome page to tell people which version of Adobe Reader to use (and how to manage it within the preferences or options, if necessary) and a note for those who use a Mac about Preview.

I just wanted to reinforce what others said and say I'm looking forward to a solution to that problem. Thank you.

[david]

Thanks Jacko. Good suggestions - I'll see what we can do.

[tricycle222]

I remember when Japanese Pod 101 added the ability to copy and paste in the pdf's and Mac users had to switch to Adobe to read the pdf's. The addition of the lite version provided a slightly different service for users who didn't like the font that Adobe uses. I have come to appreciate both forms.

I am new to Chinese Class 101, but thought I would comment on my experience. I use a Mac (MacBookPro) with Adobe 9.1.2 and have no trouble with any of the fonts and the pinyin displays clearly without the overlap that some have experienced. ( I have all of the lessons from Survivial, Beginner and Elementary. They have been coming to MyFeed since I joined in May.)

I actually spend most of my time listening to lessons on my iPod Touch. Having the dialog in pinyin and hanzi automatically appear on the screen while I listen is very convenient.

HTH

[genevere]

I am unable to read the pinyin in the following standard PDFs (PDF lite are ok)
Introduction episodes: 1-3 (inclusive)
Beginner episodes: 1- 27 (inclusive)
Survival phrases:1 - 28 (inclusive)
Audio blog: 1 - 26 (inclusive)
Elementary: 1-7 (inclusive), 27 (sic)
All about Chinese: 1-7 (inclusive), 9, 12 - 15 (inclusive)(8, 10 & 11 with no pinyin)
Bootcamp: 1-5 (inclusive)

The only file where the pinyin is ok is for Pronunciation #1
I've been able to download PDFs with pinyin from elsewhere with no problem.
Cheers

[tricycle222]

Hi Genevere,

You didn't mention what model computer you are using and what pdf reader you are using. The lesson notes definitely will not work in Preview on a Mac. As I stated before they all work fine on my mac (although, I did have to change my default reader to Adobe Reader which I did not want to do).

HTH Tom Rike, a beginner in Chinese

[genevere]

Hi tricycle222
Windows XP with the latest Adobe and all necessary fonts loaded. I signed up for a free trial with ChinesePod and had no problems with their PDFs.
Cheers

[tricycle222]

Hi Genevere,

Sorry to hear you have Windows XP. I have a Mac and have no problem with the pinyin. I opened Windows XP on my Mac, updated my Adobe to 9.1, and saw what you are referring to. There is no way that Pinyin can be read in the pdf files without extreme effort. I sympathize with you and others who are trying to use the pdfs. This is a real disaster for ChineseClass101. I'm surprised they aren't working faster to resolve the issue. At least you can read the pdf lite, but if you want to copy and paste single characters you're out of luck.

Wish I could have been more help. jiāyóu! Tom

[fugu68]

Yes, it is disappointing this font issue is still outstanding.

I can confirm the PDFs still do not display pinyin correctly for me, either using version 8 under XP, or version 9 under Vista. PDF Lite documents display fine.

I hope tech support can find a solution that works for both PCs and Macs soon....

[genevere]

Hi Tom
I appreciate you looking at that for me. Sadly there doesn't seem to be any way that individuals affected will be able to resolve the situation. Cheers, Helen

[lmcjipo]

I'm experiencing this problem as well.

My home computer is running Windows Vista and Adobe Acrobat 8.1.6 (viewing it both in Internet Explorer 8.0 and Firefox 3.5.2.

For example: in Survival Phrases #31, everything shows up fine in the "Lesson Notes" except for the pinyin which appears to be overlapping especially when there is a tone mark. In the "Lesson Notes Lite" of the same Survival Phrases lesson, the pinyin displays properly.

I tried a few of the other lessons/sections and got similar results.

I will try my work laptop (Vista) and my home laptop (Windows XP) when I get a chance and report my findings which might help to isolate the problem.

[nilshwr]

Hi,
I have the same problems with displaying pinyin in the PDFs, and I'm not really happy with the Light versions, since the Chinese characters don't show up too well. I do survive because I can use the non-light versions to display the Chinese charactes.

However -- and this seems really funny -- my parents have three laptops that they have gotten at different times, two of them have Vista and one has XP. The pinyin shows up perfectly on all three laptops, and what they have in common is that my parents have installed the full Microsoft Office on them. I don't have Microsoft Office on my laptop.

I know this sounds strange, but I thought that I'd mention it because this font problem is getting really irritating.

[genevere]

Hi nilshwr
That's interesting. I'm having problems and I have XP and don't use Office. I have Open Office. On the other hand, I can easily load PDFs with chinese characters from elsewhere with no problem. Ah well, such is life.

[nilshwr]

I'm getting more and more convinced that this is where the problem lies. I just got a new laptop with Microsoft Vista, and here I got a free trial version of Microsoft Word, and now I can view the pinyin without any problems at all. I'm using the exact same version of Adobe Reader as on my old laptop (the newest version, the one we find on the front page of adobe.com).

By the way, I'm not very good with computers, so there's a big chance I'm being stupid suggesting that this is the reason for all the problems. But I think it's worth mentioning the possibility of a link.

[chinmoza]

I' m really disappointed to see that this issue is going nowhere, and allthough all kind of people are discussing about the problem, which seems to be well defined, since weeks no comment from site admin or tech. What's the matter?