[XeTeX] how do I embed fonts into a a xelatex generated pdf?

Adam Russell arussell at cs.uml.edu
Thu May 3 18:13:54 CEST 2012


> Date: Thu, 3 May 2012 11:08:00 +0200
> From: Zdenek Wagner<zdenek.wagner at gmail.com>
> To: Unicode-based TeX for Mac OS X and other platforms<xetex at tug.org>
> Subject: Re: [XeTeX] how do I embed fonts into a a xelatex generated
> 	pdf?
> Message-ID:
> 	<CAC1phybAu4bH1TL+yP+ExpOhJumnQ1Ms56Gh9mAP-LzdYGZxDQ at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-2"
>
> Short answer: you have to buy Helvetica.
>
> Long answer: There are basic 15 PS fonts and basic 35 PDF fonts that
> must be according to the specification available everywhere. However,
> this requirement is broken even in Adobe products (the author of the
> specification) and it is quite common to see different versions of
> Times and Helvetica with different metrics (it cost me some money and
> damaged output to discover this crucial problem). It is therefore
> good (and required by DTP studios and printer houses) to embed all
> fonts. These 35 basic fonts are commercial and thus cannot be
> distributed with TeX. There are free replacements (from URW and other
> vendors). Now you have two options:
>
> 1. Embed the replacement fonts possibly losing quality
> 2. Do not embed the font and hope that the user has either the
> commercial font or a replacement font that will not be worse.
>
> Of course option 1 is better unless you know that the user has the
> commercial font with exactly the same metrics as you. You have to look
> into the manual of your TeX distribution how to instruct it to embed
> all fonts (it is done by updmap-sys in TeX Live). If you want to have
> fonts with better quality, you can consider using TeX Gyre Heros
> instead of Helvetica.
>
> Still one problem remains. You may include images created by tools as
> gnuplot or inkscape that insert texts in Helvetica but do not embed
> the font. It will need some tweaking depending on the tool.
Ah! That is exactly my problem I now realize. My paper in and of itself 
does not use Helvetica but I am using
gnuplot to generate figures. So, I guess I am going with (2). The use of 
Helvetica in the figures is so
small that hopefully any difference will be so small as to be 
undetectable. I am willing to bet that Helvetica is a
common enough font and gnuplot is a common enough tool that this 
shouldn't be an issue. We'll see...
And also, just for the record, I found these directions on embedding 
fonts to be very clear: 
http://confsys.encs.concordia.ca/public_files/embeded_fonts.php
Thank you very much for the help!




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