[OS X TeX] Extremely weird bug in: dvips? ghostscript? lucida fonts?

[Bruno Voisin]

After days learning the intricacies of hyperref, I am now facing an 
extremely weird bug of a different sort. A reduction is the following 
input file:

--------------------------------------

\documentclass[12pt,a4paper]{report}
\usepackage[applemac]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{lucidabr}

\renewcommand{\familydefault}{\sfdefault}

\DeclareFixedFont{\subtitlefont} {T1}{hls}{m} {it}{24}

\begin{document}

{\subtitlefont  Principe et spécifications}

\bigskip

L'\emph{information} est \emph{gérée de façon incohérente}.

En assurer la \emph{cohérence graphique}.

En assurer la \emph{cohérence informatique}.

Le transformer en un moyen de \emph{gérer l'information}.

\end{document}

--------------------------------------

This file uses Lucida Sans in upright and italic shapes. With pdfTeX 
everything typesets OK, but with dvips + ps2pdf it seems that every 
italic word containing the letter "é" triggers, for this word only, the 
use of a Type 3 version of the Lucida font.

The jagged (ie bitmapped) appearance of the Type 3 font is easily seen 
in TeXShop, and also visible in Acrobat if you increase the 
magnification. The Type 3 font is revealed by Acrobat as T3Font_0. 
What's most surprising is that I cannot see this font anywhere in the 
PS file created during the DVI -> PS -> PDF conversion.

This does not happen if the Lucida Sans Italic font is not called first 
as a fixed size font of larger size (line starting with 
{\subtitlefont), or if in the following line  (starting with 
L'\emph{information}) the italic shape is called only once (through 
\emph{}) instead of twice.

I'm really at a loss for understanding what's happening. I would think 
a GhostScript bug, all the more since using the Panther Distiller 
instead of ps2pdf13 suppresses the problem. Or maybe an indirect 
consequence of a malformed Lucida font?

Is anybody with Lucida fonts able to reproduce this bug? Has any hints 
on a diagnosis?

The .tex, .ps and .pdf files are available for public inspection by 
anonymous ftp from <ftp://ftp.legi.hmg.inpg.fr/pub/public/voisin/>, as 
bugsearch.tex etc.

A confused Bruno Voisin
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