Display of file-properties: Encoding problem? SOLVED

[Peter2]

I have some PDF, made with Ghostscript and PDF-Creator. It contains metadata - "document title" and "author".

When I display it with "PDF-X-Change Edit", file properties, both data contain an incredible long string like "\376\377\00\00P\00:\...."
The same is displayed on tooltip.

When I use TotalCommander, column view, with a Plugin which uses XPDF, then I see "Titel" and "Verfasser (=author)" as expected.
Where does it come from? Different encoding or something else?

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hello Peter,

Yes - most likely different encoding is the issue.
Were those files created with a recent version of GhostScript, or are they older legacy ones?
I believe I've seen this in the past - but quite some time ago, and the issue was with how the files are actually created.

Can we have a sample document to check at our end?

Regards,
Stefan

[Peter2]

Yes, Stefan
it is made with Ghostscript 8.63. Here is an example.

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Thanks Peter,

Passed your file to a colleague dealing with such problems - and we will post back here as soon as we have any further updates.

Regards,
Stefan

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hello Peter,

I've just received feedback from our dev team on this.
Turns out that this is a known issue, but the issue is at GhostScript's side. For some reason they save the PDF files with such 'encoded' text in the document metadata, while in the Document Info these titles are correct. The PDF Specification states that if the modification date in Metadata is the same of newer than in Document Info, then the Metadata should be used. This is what we do. Why Acrobat behaves differently and uses the Document Info directly - we can not say.

What we could do is try to make a 'fix' for this broken GhostScript metadata information, but ultimately it would be best if you can raise the issue with it's authors and ask them to correct it at their end!

Regards,
Stefan

[Peter2]

Hi Stefan

thanks.
For me, I'm just checking the ways to update Ghostscript on that machine (it is MS Windows Server 2003; so an update to the newest version is maybe not the best idea.)

For you, I think to fix a broken thing (caused by others) would be fine. IIRC GS 8.63 was a very often used software for PDF.

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hi Peter,

Looking online - it seems like the current latest
Stable release of GhostScript is 9.27 from April 4, 2019 - so definitely worth updating, as they probably solved that issue themselves quite some time ago (as we've not see such reports in a long time!).

Regards,
Stefan