CFDocument Screwing Up Bulleted Lists from Word Documents

[bw_bloodletter]

Given a simple Word (2010) document (.docx) that is a buleted list of three lines of text using completely default formatting, CFDocument will generate a PDF that has bizzarre icons for the bullets.

We have 3 separate servers that behave in 3 different ways.

All 3 servers are running the same versions of Coldfusion (9) and OpenOffice (3.4.1).  They're all Windows Server 2008 R2 (64-bit) servers.

One server generates a PDF with clock symbols for the bullets.  0xB7 in Wingdings.

One server generates a PDF with diamond symbols for the bullets.  0xB7 in Wingdings 2.

One server generates a PDF with 35/17 symbols for the bullets.  0xB7 in MS Reference Specialty.

Word is using the Symbol font for the bullet character, and Calibri for the body.

All servers have the Symbol font listed in the Font Management of the CFIDE Administrator:

symbol

Symbol

SymbolMT

TRUETYPE

PDF/FlashPaper

c:\windows\fonts\symbol.ttf

We're calling CFDcoument like so:

<CFDOCUMENT	FILENAME="C:\bullets.pdf"
	SRCFILE="C:\bullets.docx"
	OVERWRITE="YES"
	FORMAT="PDF"
	FONTEMBED="YES">
</CFDOCUMENT>

Changing FONTEMBED to NO doesn't change anything.  The generated PDFs still include an embedded subset of the respective fonts, and still display the incorrect symbol.

Should I be looking on the OpenOffice end?  Documents open up and display fine there, and all 3 servers have just a basic installation we havent changed any settings for.  We only use it for document conversion to PDF via Coldfusion.

Should I try installing Office 2010 on the web servers just in case it futzes with the fonts in some way?

If no one has any suggestions, my current plan is to reboot the servers at some point and try to kill off the Wingings and MS Reference Specialty fonts, in the hopes that Coldfusion will use the diamond symbols it uses on one of the servers (which is more acceptible looking than the other two options).  I have no idea why Coldfusion decides to pick whatever font it does when it reads the .docx file (which only uses Symbol and Calibri).

[bw_bloodletter]

If I open the document in OpenOffice and export it as a PDF with the "Embed standard fonts" option checked, the exported PDF is fine.  If I don't check "Embed standard fonts", the exported PDF is the same as it is when the web server generates it - using the incorrect file and font for the bullet symbol.

I've tried checking the "Embed standard fonts" option on the web server's installation of OpenOffice, but it doesn't seem to change the output PDF when the webserver converts the docx.  (Perhaps it will work after restarting the CF services?)

[Aegis_Kleais]

Just wondering, but does this process have the same failures if you try the conversion on an HTML file?  I'm wondering if all the bloat proprietary code that Word documents has is causing this issue.

[bw_bloodletter]

No idea, but that still wouldn't explain why the 3 servers behave in 3 different ways given the same file.

[bw_bloodletter]

Reverting to OpenOffice 3.3.0 fixes this.

My guess is that Coldfusion isn't telling OpenOffice 3.4.1 to "Embed standard fonts", and OpenOffice 3.4.1 is just failing to deal with certain fonts correctly when it's not told to embed them.  It seems OpenOffice 3.4.1 prefers MSReferenceSpecialty, then Wingdings Regular, then Wingdings 2 when it encounters character 0xB7 in the Symbol font (even through the Symbol font is installed).  No idea if it would try other fonts if they were installed.