[tex-live] Embedding TrueType fonts in manuals

Frank Küster frank at kuesterei.ch
Fri Jul 20 09:41:02 CEST 2007


Dear TeXLive experts,

I hope you can help us in a discussion we had on a Debian list.

Javier Fernández-Sanguino Peña <jfs at computer.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 18, 2007 at 04:07:02PM +0200, Frank Küster wrote:
>> 
>> Why are the TrueType fonts not included, anyway?  It looks like a bug in
>> dvipdf to me.  AFAIK Adobe recommends to never assume the presence and
>> correctness of system fonts, and always embed them.  Even for the base35
>> fonts used here.
>
> I don't know about Adobe's guidelines (were are they?), 

I know about the Adobe recommendations because they were given as the
reason for "pdftexDownloadBase14 true" in teTeX 3.0, but I never
actually read this recommendation and rationale.  Can anyone help out?

> but it seems that the "To PDF" conversion tools (LaTeX and DVI which
> I've tried) will never embed TrueType fonts in the generated PDF.

That might be because of "dvipsDownloadBase14 false" in updmap.cfg.  But
I'm not sure whether the tex->dvi->ps Workflow is able to embed TrueType
fonts at all.  Maybe pdfTeX is needed instead?

> This seems to make sense as:
>
> a- It is common for some TrueType fonts (Courier, Garamond) to be available in
>   most installed systems.

According to 

$ strace -f -o xpdf.trace xpdf install.en.pdf # look at first and second
                                              # page, then press q
$ grep -a FontName $(grep open xpdf.trace | grep type1 | sed -e 's at .*open("@@;s at pfb".*$@pfb@')
/usr/share/fonts/type1/gsfonts/n019004l.pfb:/FontName /NimbusSanL-Bold def
/usr/share/fonts/type1/gsfonts/n021003l.pfb:/FontName /NimbusRomNo9L-Regu def
/usr/share/fonts/type1/gsfonts/n019003l.pfb:/FontName /NimbusSanL-Regu def
/usr/share/fonts/type1/gsfonts/n022003l.pfb:/FontName /NimbusMonL-Regu def

So, no, Times and Helvetica are not present on my system and used,
instead the URW free replacements are used.  Which are a quite good
replacement, but not exactly the same.

Regards, Frank
-- 
Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX/TeXLive)


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