title: Dynamically generated PDF files working in most readers except Adobe Reader
body: <p>I'm trying to dynamically generate PDFs from user input, where I basically print the user input and overlay it on an existing PDF that I did not create.</p>
  
  <p>It works, with one major exception. Adobe Reader doesn't read it properly, on Windows or on Linux. QuickOffice on my phone doesn't read it either. So I thought I'd trace the path of me creating the files -</p>
  
  <p>1 - <a href="http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B-5QRYXK0umiMmE4NWRmMTUtMDMxOC00ZmVlLWIwODEtOWYyOTY4MDc5Y2Q1&amp;hl=en" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Original PDF of background</a><br>
  PDF 1.2 made with Adobe Distiller with the LZW encoding. I didn't make this.</p>
  
  <p>2 - <a href="http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B-5QRYXK0umiZjdlNmEzNWItMDQ3Ny00Mzk5LTkyZWQtZWE3OGY0Y2VkOTY4&amp;hl=en" rel="nofollow noreferrer">PDF of background</a><br>
  PDF 1.4 made with Ghostscript. I used pdf2ps then ps2pdf on the above to strip LZW so that the reportlab and pyPDF libraries would recognize it. Note that this file looks "fuzzy," like a bad scan, in Adobe Reader, but looks fine in other readers.</p>
  
  <p>3 - <a href="http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B-5QRYXK0umiMWZmMzE2NzUtN2RlZi00NmMyLTkyN2MtNzdlZDg0N2Q1MmUx&amp;hl=en" rel="nofollow noreferrer">PDF of user-input text formatted to be combined with background</a><br>
  PDF 1.3 made with Reportlab from user input. Opens properly and looks good in every reader I've tried.</p>
  
  <p>4 - <a href="http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B-5QRYXK0umiOWZmNDgxNzQtMzBiZC00OTYzLWI4MzMtMzVhYWEyNmZjZmVl&amp;hl=en" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Finished PDF</a><br>
  PDF 1.3 made from PyPDF's <code>mergePage()</code> function on 2 and 3.</p>
  
  <p>Does not open in:<br>
  Adobe Reader for Windows<br>
  Adobe Reader for Linux<br>
  QuickOffice for Android</p>
  
  <p>Opens perfectly in:<br>
  Google Docs' PDF viewer on the web<br>
  evince for linux<br>
  ghostscript viewer for linux
  Foxit reader for Windows<br>
  Preview for Mac  </p>
  
  <p>Are there known issues that I should know about? I don't know exactly what "flate" is, but from the internet I gather that it's some sort of open source alternative to LZW for PDF compression? Could that be causing my problem? If so, are there any libraries I could use to fix the cause in my code?</p>