[pdftex] AR 5 not working with pdftex?

Tom Kacvinsky tjk at ams.org
Sun Jun 3 12:35:02 CEST 2001


I tend to think that the problem is with how Acrobat writes out the PS code that
goes to the printer.  Obviously, the font renderer in Acrobat has no problems
with gaps in the Subrs array, because the glyphs get rendered just fine on
screen.

The more interesting thing to see right now is the PS code emitted from Acrobat
at print time, or information on the printer being used.  The reason for the
latter is that if Acrobat sends the font to the PS file unaltered, the problem
has to be with the printer's PS (or clone PS) interpreter.

Tom

On Sun, 3 Jun 2001, Y&Y Support wrote:

> Hi:
>
> This experiment was again very illuminating!
>
> Probably the reason it works the way you say is that apparently
> everything is fine *until* you run into a gap in the Subrs array.
> So e.g. if you use all of the glyphs that use hint replacement,
> then all the corresponding Subrs will be present, and there
> will be no problem.
>
> Apparently the problem occurs when you use a glyph that
> calls a Subr *after* the first gap (which explains why "fi" always
> works --- it uses the first hint replacement Subr right after the
> "boiler plate" linkage code for FlexProc and hint replacement.
>
> At 19:25 2001-06-03 +1000, Robert Howlett wrote:
> >The problem glyphs are precisely the ones for which the
> >character drawing routines use "callsubr", except for
> >the first one which uses this, namely fi.
> >Apparently the first use of this is OK, after that the
> >program gets confused.
> >In fact, if you print the characters that use "callsubr"
> >in order then the problem doesn't appear.
> >
> >e.g. the following file was OK
> >
> >\nopagenumbers
> >
> >\char12 \char13 \char14 \char15 \char25 \char26 \char30 \char36
> >\char37 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 \char62 \char63
> >\bye
> >
> >If the initial \char12 is left out then the problem
> >reappears.
> >
> >Since the subroutines in question are only used once each,
> >it looks like it would be easy enough to hack the font to fix
> >things.
>
> Actually, you could not move the Subrs into the CharStrings.
> Hint replacement requires that the code for the new hints
> be in a Subr.  But you could fix pdfTeX/DVIPS so they
> renumber the Subrs.  In fact, I seem to remember commenting
> on this "issue" to HTH a  few month/years back when
> there was another problem with PDF output.
>
> >(I don't understand the code very well myself, but that's
> >how things look to me.)
> >
> >Bob
> >
> >------------
>
>




More information about the pdftex mailing list