Sonoma field/font glitch in PDF forms; how do I fix this?

[ScottR]

It's possible this started in Ventura, but I'm not sure since I don't have a Mac with it installed.
I regularly need to fill out a PDF form in Preview. It worked just fine on my iMac--an old model that couldn't be updated past Monterey.
I bought a Mac Mini with Sonoma installed, and now that same form glitches. Many fields in that form now don't display some of the characters once I tab out of that field. That is, if I enter
123
once I tab out of that field it displays and prints as
12
If I tab back to the field it shows
123
so the additional character is there, just hidden.
Preview won't allow me to change the font/font size--it always springs back to the default (I've tried using LibreOffice, since that can actually edit PDF forms, but I've never used it and have no idea what I'm doing).
I've tried the app "PDF Professional" but it has the same problem, so I presume it has something to do with how Sonoma displays PDFs rather than with Preview itself.
Is there a workaround?

 

[BrianBaughn]

It might be something to do with fonts used in the PDF not being embedded and your Sonoma Mac Mini not having those fonts and substituting ones that end up as you describe. Your old iMac may have had the proper fonts and/or substituted with fonts that made the document display and print properly.

Or…Sonoma/Preview is screwing up a perfectly fine PDF.

 

[Bazza1]

Some browsers now profess to be PDF readers - I don't know if that goes so far as to include editing. You might want try Open with... your favourite browser and see?

I've had mixed success with Preview and for the most part go with a (non-Adobe) product instead. That said, I've heard that PDFgear (free in the Apple App Store) works well. Not sure what the font situation is like, though. Could be an issue with the PDF's embedded fonts and Sonoma's library, as BrianBaugh suggests.

 

[ScottR]

I just tried PDFGear and it has the same problem.

I downloaded and installed the latest Adobe Reader, and in it those fields function properly but I get two different problems:

1) it only properly places all the fields if Print>Page Sizing and Handling is set to "Actual Size," but the very bottom of the text in the bottommost field is cut off. This prints fine in Preview so it's not outside the printer's page printable margins. I'm printing onto a preprinted form, so all of the text fields MUST appear as-is (I can't use print-to-fit or they won't be in the right place).
EDIT: going to Page Setup in the Print dialog and selecting my actual printer rather than "Any Printer" fixed this.

2) Most of the form consists of the premade fields, which now work fine, but I have two added elements: a JPG of a signature, and a text box with the day's date.

Edit: 3) for some reason a DIFFERENT field has the numbers cut off: for some reason Reader cuts off the top 1/3 in a field in the middle of the form.

When I print (or if I look at the preview in the Print dialog) these two elements don't appear. For some reason the signature also doesn't appear if I use Reader's "signature" tool.