Proc odstext produces uneven spacing in PDF output using inline style

[NeilH]

I'm trying to write to a pdf file using proc odstext and getting additional spaces before some of the words I'm applying the inline style to. This seems to occur regardless of the actual style attribute (bold, italic, underline, ...). I noticed an almost identical post (https://communities.sas.com/t5/ODS-and-Base-Reporting/ODS-TEXT-produces-uneven-spacing-in-PDF-output...) from some years back that wasn't resolved. And another post that mentions some Microsoft specific fonts causing issues.

The issue doesn't occur without the inline style command or with html output to the browser rather than creating a pdf. It also doesn't matter whether the text comes from a macro variable or not.

I'm including code and example output. You can see the additional spaces before some of the bolded numbers in the text. I appreciate anyone's thoughts on this matter. Thanks.

%let school = "Acme U";
goptions reset=all device=SASPRTC;
ods _ALL_ close;
%let folder = M:\Engagement Surveys - 2024\Scratch\;
%let filename = %sysfunc(dequote(&school));
%let extension = .pdf;
options nodate;
ods pdf file="&folder&filename&extension" startpage=no;

data _null_;
set qc_temp1;
call symputx('faculty', f_count);
call symputx('students', s_count);
run;

ods proclabel = "Introduction";
proc odstext pagebreak = YES;
ods escapechar='^';

p
"Nationally, ^{style[font_weight=Bold]134} member institutions responded to the survey. Across those institutions, 
^{style[font_weight=Bold]675} individual faculty members and ^{style[font_weight=Bold]1,124} 
students responded. At your institution, ^{style[font_weight=Bold]&faculty.} faculty and ^{style[font_weight=Bold]&students.} 
students responded." /
style = {font_size=14pt just=l width=100%};

run;

ods pdf close; 
ods listing; 

[ballardw]

Bold takes up more space. Even just the guard space involved between words in a proportional font.

I might suggest an approach other than bold, such as underline or italic or possibly even text color. But I suspect that width=100% may still result in some odd spacing.

I don't see a terrible difference when creating RTF output. Or in the RTF converted to PDF by Adobe.

I also note that having the start of the inline in the first column or the end of a line in the editor seems to contribute to some irregularity even in HTML.

[NeilH]

@ballardw. thanks for the quick reply. I've bumped into the same problem with italics and underlining. So it's not specific to bold. And I do need to create a PDF directly.

[ballardw]

You might consider finding one of the fonts that supports a fontweight of semibold, create a new style that uses that font family and see if the semibold does the same thing.

Or give up on bolding text inline. Maybe present a small table instead of paragraph text. 

I do understand the frustration. I have worked on projects that were linking Word report documents to Excel pages for graphs and Access data base for text brought together by Mailmerge. Then we had to create a customized version of a PDF-like file that our printer required for actual printing. The driver required rendered things like bullet points differently depending on the version of Windows it was installed on. So instead of being able to share manual steps of the process across 5 staff we had only one computer that rendered the documents correctly.

[NeilH]

It is a bit frustrating. : ) All good thoughts, but at this point, I'm checking to see if there's a way to correct the spacing with the bold, italics, ... w/o changing anything else about the text. From what I've seen in responses to a couple of past similar questions, there may not be a straightforward solution due to font incompatibilities, as you point out. But if someone has worked  it out, I'd welcome hearing. Thanks.