[OS X TeX] Creating a Sensible PDF Document

[Jonathan Kew]

On 7 Feb 2007, at 6:56 pm, Philipp Mathey wrote:

> Thanks Bruno !
>
> I was in fact using xdvipdfmx together with the "-p letter -q -E"
> option. Good to know that this suffices. By the way, the option "-q"
> is not listed. Does it stand for "quiet" or something ? I think it  
> suppresses some
> command line output.

Correct. This needs to be added to the usage message. (Actually, it  
sometimes suppresses a little too much... needs some adjustment!)

> I tried a little experiment by compiling a document with
> "xelatex -no-pdf ..." and then "xdvipdfmx (-q -E) ..."  and then  
> sending the resulting pdf file it to
> some server running Linux. It seems the -E didn't
> have any effect on the size of the resulting pdf file.  I could  
> read the pdf file
> on the Linux system, using xpdf, with or without the -E option.

Yes. -E doesn't mean quite what Bruno thought. (Ah, if only there was  
documentation.....!)

AFAIK, xdvipdfmx will always embed the fonts needed, *unless* the  
license flags in the font prohibit this. (Some vendors don't want  
their fonts to be embedded.)

The -E option tells the driver to always embed the fonts, regardless  
of the license restriction. You get a warning message if a restricted  
font is used, but the resulting PDF document is fine to use. I  
suppose to respect the vendor's license terms, you shouldn't  
circulate such a document, but as generating a PDF (with the font  
embedded) is a necessary part of the printing procedure, it seems  
equivalent to a printer driver including the font within the  
PostScript stream it sends to the printer.

JK




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