[OS X TeX] OT: help with font embeddings

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 08.02.2006 um 03:55 schrieb Jan Anderssen:

> (i) how can i find out which fonts are problematic for the printer?  
> i assume any base35 fonts shouldn't be, but there are lots of  
> different entries for various times versions, as well as many other  
> fonts. is there a way to disentangle them so as to find out where  
> the problem exactly lies?

You can run for example pdffonts from the xpdf suite on each PDF  
file. You'll get a list of fonts used, embedded or not -- but you  
won't get their encodings! And I think it's only 14 fonts, that do  
need to be embedded for *viewing* in PDF viewers ... the PS printer  
will need the fonts either built-in, or downloaded, or embedded in  
the document.

>
> (ii) is there a way to embed fonts "after the fact"?

In theory: of course! Practically it will fail because the  
(partially) embedded fonts are all re-encoded, so you would need to  
download to the printer the encoded fonts that an x is not printed as  
an u. And I don't think that there is a programme yet to tell the  
encoding's name (it *must* be recorded in the PDF, because from a  
partially embedded font, i.e. one that only contains the 87 actually  
used glyphs from the font's full set of 321 -- all numbers are  
examples -- you cannot determine the encoding).



IMO the best thing is to write to the authors and ask them to submit  
their contributions again with all fonts (partially) embedded.  
Remember that a commercial print shop uses software to check whether  
a document could be printed. So this (preflight?) programme already  
might reject the book when it sees that some font is not embedded.

--
Greetings

   Pete

The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck is the day they  
start selling vacuum cleaners.


------------------------- Info --------------------------
Mac-TeX Website: http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/
          & FAQ: http://latex.yauh.de/faq/
TeX FAQ: http://www.tex.ac.uk/faq
List Archive: http://tug.org/pipermail/macostex-archives/