[pdftex] Embedding a font to use it in a form

[Gregory Heytings]

Hi Karl,

Many thanks for your answer!

>
> It should work to fully embed a font (no subsetting) by using <<foo.pfb 
> in the map file entry instead of <foo.pfb.  This is tersely discussed in 
> the pdftex manual under "fontfile", page 11 in the pdftex-a.pdf that is 
> in TeX Live 2015.
>

After some more research, it seems indeed that one aspect of the problem 
is to fully embed the font.  Apparently it does not work with pfa/pfb 
fonts, however (but I am not sure that it cannot be done); it does work, 
for sure, with an otf font file.

>
> However, I have no knowledge of how to specify a font for use in text 
> field forms.  Maybe someone else here (Heiko, Martin ... ?) can help.
>

So far my best answer to my own question goes as follows: one has to 
insert the otf file as a pdf object, with something like "\pdfobj stream 
attr { /Subtype /OpenType } file {Font.otf}", and then create two other 
pdf objects manually, namely a /FontDescriptor and a /Font, the latter 
containing /FirstChar 0 /LastChar 255, and 256 values in the /Width array. 
Then that font can be used in a form, by adding a reference to it in the 
resource dictionary of the form.

(Once I got the above scheme working, I tried to remplace the "\pdfobj 
stream attr { /Subtype /OpenType } file {Font.otf}" with a "\pdfobj stream 
attr { /Subtype /Type1 } file {Font.pfa}", but it did not work anymore.)

The problem is that doing this involves a lot of manual work.  A more 
direct way to do this (with pdfTeX) would be much appreciated.

Gregory