[OS X TeX] pdf font coding problems

[Jens Nöckel]

On Dec 20, 2005, at 5:35 PM, Gary L. Gray wrote:
>>> Here is an AppleScript that Francesco and I threw together this 
>>> afternoon that takes a PDF generated from a .tex file and converts 
>>> all the fonts to outlines. To create an application droplet, copy 
>>> the AppleScript code, paste it into the Script Editor, and save it 
>>> as an application. You can then drop PDFs on it and it will convert 
>>> the fonts to outlines.
>>>

Looking at Intaglio, I see that it has the same problem with LaTeX 
fonts as Illustrator, as soon as one tries to edit the PDF (rather than 
just placing it). In fact, Intaglio does a slightly inferior job.
Therefore, it really seems useful to have a script that automates the 
ghostscript incantation I posted earlier, for use with Illustrator, 
Intaglio, or perhaps other programs of that type. Of course, for those 
who are happy with the command line, all you'd need is to save that 
one-line "gs ..." instruction as an executable script somewhere.

I did exactly that, but for the benefit of others I now wrapped the 
whole thing using the Platypus tool (a very easy way to create 
applications from shell scripts). So now I have an application that 
accepts either PDF, Postscript or EPS by dropping a file onto it; it 
then strips the fonts away and saves the result as a PDF file, with the 
same base name but the ending "-nofont.pdf"  .

I'm tentatively calling this application FontBegone... FontBegone now 
also appears in the contextual menu of my PDF/EPS files.
In contrast to the earlier instructions, I'm now converting the result 
back to PDF because for longer documents that seemed better to me. For 
one thing, Illustrator then starts up a dialog letting you choose which 
page to edit.
One additional difference to Gary's earlier applescript is that I 
decided not to open Illustrator automatically after the conversion 
process, because (as I said) Intaglio users would benefit from the same 
fix.

I have posted the application and installation instructions on my web 
site,
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~noeckel/Illustrator.html#stripfonts

Hope this is of use to someone,

Jens



Jens Uwe Nöckel
Assistant Professor
Department of Physics
University of Oregon
Eugene
http://www.uoregon.edu/~noeckel

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