PDF error: Couldn't find a font for 'Helvetica'

[bakaburg1]

Hello, I'm trying to convert a Pdf created via knitr to PNG.

When using pdf_convert I get this error: "PDF error: Couldn't find a font for 'Helvetica'".

Helvetica is undoubtedly installed on my machine, so I don't understand where this message comes from.

Thanks

[jeroen]

Please include an example pdf, and the R code that you use and sessionInfo().

[bakaburg1]

R code and output:

> pdf_convert("ReportTemplate.pdf", format = "png", dpi = 300)

Converting page 1 to ReportTemplate_1.png...PDF error: Couldn't find a font for 'Helvetica'
PDF error: Couldn't find a font for 'Helvetica'
PDF error: Couldn't find a font for 'Helvetica'
PDF error: Couldn't find a font for 'Helvetica'
PDF error: Couldn't find a font for 'Helvetica'
PDF error: Couldn't find a font for 'Helvetica'
PDF error: Couldn't find a font for 'Helvetica'
PDF error: Couldn't find a font for 'Helvetica'
PDF error: Couldn't find a font for 'Helvetica'
PDF error: Couldn't find a font for 'Helvetica'
PDF error: Couldn't find a font for 'Helvetica'
PDF error: Couldn't find a font for 'Helvetica'
PDF error: Couldn't find a font for 'Helvetica'
PDF error: Couldn't find a font for 'Helvetica'
PDF error: Couldn't find a font for 'Helvetica'
PDF error: Couldn't find a font for 'Helvetica'
PDF error: Couldn't find a font for 'Helvetica'
PDF error: Couldn't find a font for 'Helvetica'
PDF error: Couldn't find a font for 'Helvetica'
PDF error: Couldn't find a font for 'Helvetica'
PDF error: Couldn't find a font for 'Helvetica'
PDF error: Couldn't find a font for 'Helvetica'
PDF error: Couldn't find a font for 'Helvetica'
PDF error: Couldn't find a font for 'Helvetica'
PDF error: Couldn't find a font for 'Helvetica'
PDF error: Couldn't find a font for 'Helvetica'
PDF error: Couldn't find a font for 'Helvetica'
PDF error: Couldn't find a font for 'Helvetica'
PDF error: Couldn't find a font for 'Helvetica'
PDF error: Couldn't find a font for 'Helvetica'
PDF error: Couldn't find a font for 'Helvetica'
PDF error: Couldn't find a font for 'Helvetica'
PDF error: Couldn't find a font for 'Helvetica'
PDF error: Couldn't find a font for 'Helvetica'
PDF error: Couldn't find a font for 'Helvetica-Bold'
PDF error: Couldn't find a font for 'Helvetica-Bold'
PDF error: Couldn't find a font for 'Helvetica-Bold'
PDF error: Couldn't find a font for 'Helvetica-Bold'
 done!
[1] "ReportTemplate_1.png"

PDF source ReportTemplate.pdf

PNG output

Session info

> sessionInfo()
R version 3.4.0 (2017-04-21)
Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin15.6.0 (64-bit)
Running under: macOS  10.13.5

Matrix products: default
BLAS: /System/Library/Frameworks/Accelerate.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/vecLib.framework/Versions/A/libBLAS.dylib
LAPACK: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/3.4/Resources/lib/libRlapack.dylib

locale:
[1] it_IT.UTF-8

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

other attached packages:
 [1] pdftools_1.8     convertGraph_0.1 lubridate_1.7.2  scales_0.5.0     ggplot2_2.2.1    dplyr_0.7.5      knitr_1.17       rmarkdown_1.6   
 [9] foreach_1.4.4    readxl_1.0.0     stringr_1.3.0   

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
 [1] Rcpp_0.12.17     bindr_0.1.1      magrittr_1.5     munsell_0.4.3    tidyselect_0.2.4 colorspace_1.3-2 R6_2.2.2         rlang_0.2.1     
 [9] plyr_1.8.4       tools_3.4.0      grid_3.4.0       gtable_0.2.0     htmltools_0.3.6  iterators_1.0.9  yaml_2.1.14      lazyeval_0.2.1  
[17] rprojroot_1.2    digest_0.6.12    assertthat_0.2.0 tibble_1.4.2     bindrcpp_0.2.2   purrr_0.2.4      codetools_0.2-15 glue_1.2.0      
[25] evaluate_0.10.1  stringi_1.1.6    compiler_3.4.0   pillar_1.1.0     cellranger_1.1.0 backports_1.1.1  pkgconfig_2.0.1 

[jeroen]

Hmm I can't reproduce this problem on my mac (R 3.5.1 on macOS High Sierra), it seems to render just fine. Your version of R is pretty old though. Can you try installing the latest versions of R and xquartz?

[bakaburg1]

Uhm, I updated R and Quartz and still nothing. But now missing font warnings were preceded by a "Fontconfig error: Cannot load default config file" warning. Maybe it's the main problem

[RafaRafa]

I had the same issue, updated "fontconfig" following this: https://github.com/Kozea/WeasyPrint/issues/402

But this did not clear up "PDF error: Couldn't find a font for 'X'"

[saregriffith]

has anyone figure this one out - currently, have this error and haven't been able to sort it out. have updated everything, etc etc but unable to fix

[matthiaskaeding]

Has someone found a solution for this? Having the same issue one mabook air m1.

[Averysaurus]

Just encountered this error myself. Has anyone resolved this one recently?

UPDATE: the error occured with me when there is both image and text (copy-pasteable) data in a single document. If you receive these errors, check to see if that's the case. I've run many an OCR function on image-level PDF without major issues by fixing this myself in the documents.