[pdftex] Symbol font display problems with acroread

[George N. White III]

On 4/4/07, TeX Guy <pdftexlist at gmail.com> wrote:

> this may be yet another Adobe Acrobat font issue, but could be useful
> for people on this list, too.
>
> When I process this simple file with pdflatex
>
> \documentclass{article}
> % \pdfcompresslevel=0
> \usepackage{mathptmx}
> \begin{document}
>
> $\alpha \beta \chi \Delta \epsilon \Phi \Gamma \eta \iota \kappa \Lambda$
>
> $\propto$
>
> \end{document}
>
> [...]
>
> where the font map file pdftex.map does not embedd the standard Symbol font
>
> psyr Symbol
> psyro StandardSymL ".167 SlantFont" <usyr.pfb
>
> the resulting pdf file displays fine in gs, evince, kpdf, xpdf, but when
> viewed with acroread, the upper case Greek symbols and the "proportional"
> symbol are missing without any error indication. this is with acroread
> 7.08 and various linux boxes.
>
> The problem does not occur when I embed the Symbol font via this pdftex.map
>
> psyr StandardSymL <usyr.pfb
> psyro StandardSymL ".167 SlantFont" <usyr.pfb
>
> I compared the glyph tables from the installed ghostscript symbol
> fonts and the Adobe Sy____.pfb file and they appear to be the same.

I see the problem using either sy____.pdf or usyr.pfb on debian linux
and also Win32 using TL2007, but not with MikTeX-2.5 (pdftex-1.30.6).

> Why would some standard Symbol glyphs not show unless the font is embedded?
>
> What other unexpected side effects could the pdftex_ndl14.map file have?

Here is a minimal example for plain tex that works with acroread using
pdftex-1.30.6 (MikTeX-2.5) , but not 1.40.3 (linux or Win32):

\pdfcompresslevel=0
\pdfmapline{psyr Symbol}
\nopagenumbers
\font\sy=psyr
\sy a
\end

I haven't time at the moment to investigate the differences in the output files.

-- 
George N. White III <aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca>
Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia