[pdftex] Symbol font display problems with acroread

[TeX Guy]

Hi,


this may be yet another Adobe Acrobat font issue, but could be useful
for people on this list, too.

When I process this simple file with pdflatex

\documentclass{article}
% \pdfcompresslevel=0
\usepackage{mathptmx}
\begin{document}

$\alpha \beta \chi \Delta \epsilon \Phi \Gamma \eta \iota \kappa \Lambda$

$\propto$

\end{document}

# pdflatex c.tex
This is pdfTeX, Version 3.141592-1.40.3 (Web2C 7.5.6)
entering extended mode
(./c.tex
LaTeX2e <2003/12/01>
Babel <v3.8h> and hyphenation patterns for american, french, german, ngerman, r
ussian, spanish, nohyphenation, loaded.
(teTeX-3.0/texmf-dist/tex/latex/base/article.cls
Document Class: article 2004/02/16 v1.4f Standard LaTeX document class
(teTeX-3.0/texmf-dist/tex/latex/base/size10.clo))
(teTeX-3.0/texmf-dist/tex/latex/psnfss/mathptmx.sty) (./c.aux)
(teTeX-3.0/texmf-dist/tex/latex/psnfss/ot1ptm.fd)
(teTeX-3.0/texmf-dist/tex/latex/psnfss/ot1ztmcm.fd)
(teTeX-3.0/texmf-dist/tex/latex/psnfss/omlztmcm.fd)
(teTeX-3.0/texmf-dist/tex/latex/psnfss/omsztmcm.fd)
(teTeX-3.0/texmf-dist/tex/latex/psnfss/omxztmcm.fd) [1{pdftex.map}]
(./c.aux) ){teTeX-3.0/texmf-dist/fonts/enc/dvips/psnfss/8r.enc}
<teTeX-3.0/texmf-dist/fonts/type1/urw/symbol/usyr.pfb>
Output written on c.pdf (1 page, 7865 bytes).
Transcript written on c.log.

where the font map file pdftex.map does not embedd the standard Symbol font

psyr Symbol
psyro StandardSymL ".167 SlantFont" <usyr.pfb

the resulting pdf file displays fine in gs, evince, kpdf, xpdf, but when
viewed with acroread, the upper case Greek symbols and the "proportional"
symbol are missing without any error indication. this is with acroread
7.08 and various linux boxes.

The problem does not occur when I embed the Symbol font via this pdftex.map

psyr StandardSymL <usyr.pfb
psyro StandardSymL ".167 SlantFont" <usyr.pfb

I compared the glyph tables from the installed ghostscript symbol
fonts and the Adobe Sy____.pfb file and they appear to be the same.

Why would some standard Symbol glyphs not show unless the font is embedded?

What other unexpected side effects could the pdftex_ndl14.map file have?

Cheers
T.