[tex-live] Real Helvetica?

Zdenek Wagner zdenek.wagner at gmail.com
Wed Sep 22 00:19:21 CEST 2010


2010/9/22 Reinhard Kotucha <reinhard.kotucha at web.de>:
> On 21 September 2010 Mark London wrote:
>
>  > Hi - I have an installation of TeX Live 2007.  Is there a way to install
>  > and/or define real Helvetica fonts in TeX Live (in TeX, not LaTeX), such
>  > that when I create a PDF, that the PDF will show that it's using
>  > Helvetica fonts?  Right now when I try use Helvetica fonts, (like
>  > phvb8r),  the font names in the PDF output show up as Nimbus something
>  > or another.  Thanks. - Mark
>
> Unfortunately I have no time to do any investigations myself.
> However, the program updmap seems to support this already.  I see code
> there like:
>
> ###################################################################
> # psADOBE()
> #   transform fontnames from URW to Adobe
> ###################################################################
> psADOBE()
> {
>  sed \
>  [stuff omitted]
>    -e 's/ NimbusSanL-Bold / Helvetica-Bold /' \
>    -e 's/ NimbusSanL-BoldCond / Helvetica-Narrow-Bold /' \
>    -e 's/ NimbusSanL-BoldItal / Helvetica-BoldOblique /' \
>    -e 's/ NimbusSanL-BoldCondItal / Helvetica-Narrow-BoldOblique /' \
>    -e 's/ NimbusSanL-Regu / Helvetica /' \
>
> I suppose that you can enable "real Helvetica" with updmap --setoption
> somehow.  Maybe the LW35 option is what you need, but I'm not sure.
> Sorry, I've no time to provide more helpful information ATM, but I
> hope that the hint is useful though.
>
That's right, I used it a few years ago when I was sure that th PS
file will go to my own HP LJ 4m printer and nowhere else. These
switches do exactly what I wrote in my previous post: the PS/PDF files
require Helvetica but the font is not embedded. You have to verify
thoroughly that you give the file to people who have the same version
of Helvetica as you have an that the metrics of the font (i.e. AFM
file) is the same as the metrics in the phv*.tfm files and that all
accented characters you need are really present in the font that will
be used for printing. Remember that even Adobe gives incompatible
versions of Times and Helvetica to different versions of Acrobat
Reader. After problems in versions 3, 4 and 5 I decided not to use
real Times and Helvetica any more and thus I did no font compatibility
checks in AR versions 6-9.

> Regards,
>  Reinhard
>
> --
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Reinhard Kotucha                                      Phone: +49-511-3373112
> Marschnerstr. 25
> D-30167 Hannover                              mailto:reinhard.kotucha at web.de
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Microsoft isn't the answer. Microsoft is the question, and the answer is NO.
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>



-- 
Zdeněk Wagner
http://hroch486.icpf.cas.cz/wagner/
http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz



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