[XeTeX] Problem with the courier font pcrr8a.pfb

[Jonathan Kew]

On 3 Mar 2008, at 4:30 pm, Ulrike Fischer wrote:

> Hello
>
> the following document
>
> \documentclass{scrreprt}
> \usepackage{fontspec}
> \setmainfont{Courier}
> \begin{document}
> ö
> \end{document}
>
> fails to compile in miktex 2.7. because xdvipdfmx don't like the  
> courier
> font:
>
> [1<Courier(Courier:Regular)@10.91pt<NATIVE-FONTMAP:Courier/H/65536/0>
> pdf_font>> Input encoding "Identity-H" requires at least 2 bytes.
> pdf_font>> The -m <00> option will be assumed for
> "C:/Programme/MiKTeX2.7/fonts/type1/adobe/courier/pcrr8a.pfb".
> (CID:Courier)
> pdf_font>> Type0 font
> "C:/Programme/MiKTeX2.7/fonts/type1/adobe/courier/pcrr8a.p
> fb" cmap_id=<Identity-H,0> opened at font_id=<Courier/H/65536/0,0>.
>> ](CID:C:/Programme/MiKTeX2.7/fonts/type1/adobe/courier/pcrr8a.pfb 
>> [CIDFontType0]
>
> ** WARNING ** Obsolete four arguments of "endchar" will be used for  
> Type
> 1 "seac" operator.
> ** ERROR ** This font using the "seac" command for accented
> characters...
>
> Output file removed.
>
>
>
> Is this a bug of the font or of xdvipdfmx?

It seems that the font is using an "obsolete" Type 1 construction;  
this may not strictly speaking be a bug, but it's not a good idea.

>
> dvipdfmx seems to able to handle the font:
>
> C:\UlleDoku\test>dvipdfmx -v test-utf-tex
> test-utf-tex.dvi -> test-utf-tex.pdf
> DVI Comment:  TeX output 2008.03.03:1726
> <AGL:glyphlist.txt>[1<pcrr8t at 9.96pt(TFM:pcrr8t)(VF:pcrr8t 
> (TFM:pcrr8r)<pcrr8r at 9.9
> 6pt(Encoding:8r)
> pdf_font>> Simple font "pcrr8a" enc_id=<8r,3> opened at
> font_id=<pcrr8r,0>.
>> )(VF)>](pcrr8a[Type1]
> ** WARNING ** Obsolete four arguments of "endchar" will be used for  
> Type
> 1 "seac" operator.
> )
> Compression saved 128 bytes. Try "-V 5" for better compression
> 4070 bytes written

I suspect the key difference is that with LaTeX+dvipdfmx, you're  
using a TFM file and an encoding vector, and dvipdfmx ends up  
embedding the font directly as re-encoded Type 1 data. This works  
despite the obsolete form of Type 1 character program.

With xelatex + fontspec + xdvipdfmx, you're asking for it to be used  
as a Unicode font, potentially accessing more than 256 characters and  
addressing them by 16-bit indexes; to do this, xdvipdfmx has to  
convert the font to CID Type 0, and it can't do that conversion with  
this obsolete type of font program.

Possible solutions:

(a) Patch xdvipdfmx so that it can convert such a font; that would be  
nice, but I don't know much about this area so I'm unlikely to do it  
any time soon. (Contributions welcome!)

(b) Use Courier via TFM files, etc, just as you do with LaTeX. I have  
not tested this but suspect it would probably work fine. Of course,  
you lose the (potential) extended Unicode support, but the chances  
are that such an old Courier font doesn't have a very rich character  
set anyway.

(c) Get a more modern Courier font, e.g., in OpenType format.

(d) Use "Courier New", which I think is the Windows version of  
Courier and is in TrueType or OpenType format.

One last remark: I'm a bit surprised that xelatex + fontspec locates  
and uses pfb fonts like this; I'm not sure it's really appropriate  
for it to do so. But that may depend on how things are configured in  
MikTeX. Perhaps it's too "eager" to include the texmf/fonts  
directories as though they were system-level fonts.

JK