Bug in pdflatex.exe (as opposed to miktex-pdftex -undump=pdflatex): missing line in PDF

[Edmund Weitz]

I could finally isolate a small test case for a problem that I've had for years but that was hard to reproduce with a few lines. The issue is that miktex-pdftex.exe -undump=pdflatex test.tex and pdflatex.exe test.tex produce different PDFs from the same source file and the one produced by the latter is faulty - there's a line missing. The attached ZIP file MWE.zip contains the test case, the two different outputs, the two log files and information about my setup (MikTeX 2.9 on Windows 10, updated yesterday).

Just to make sure: This is not a viewer issue. The line is missing in SumatraPDF, Acrobat Reader, and other viewers and the PDF files are actually different. The relevant difference looks like this:

[(Erst)-250(im)-250(20.)-250(Jahrhundert)-250(kam)-250(die)-250(v)8(olle)-250(W)60(ahrheit)-250(ans)-250(Licht.)-250(Die)]

[(Erst)]TJ -32626.8 0 Td [(im)-250(20.)-250(Jahrhundert)-250(kam)-250(die)-250(v)8(olle)-250(W)60(ahrheit)-250(ans)-250(Licht.)-250(Die)]

For related information, see also this question at Stack Exchange.

[Christian Schenk]

I cannot reproduce this. Both PDFs seem to be identical in my eyes.
Your log files show that you are using different memory settings:

592261 words of font info for 70 fonts, out of 2000000 for 9000

vs

592261 words of font info for 70 fonts, out of 8000000 for 9000

test_miktex-pdftex.pdf
test_pdflatex.pdf

[Edmund Weitz]

Digging through my old e-mails, maybe I found the culprit. Years ago, I did this (following some advice from someone I forgot):

initexmf --edit-config-file pdflatex

Add this to the file and save it:

pool_size=5000000
main_memory=6000000
extra_mem_bot=2000000
font_mem_size=2000000

Then run this:

initexmf --dump=pdflatex

With these settings, I get the error. If I repeat the process with an empty config file, the error is gone.