PDF file inclusion in pdfTeX

[Bruno Voisin]

> On 21 Oct 2024, at 22:58, Karl Berry <karl at freefriends.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi Bruno - sorry, I can't investigate in depth right now, but from your
> description, what comes to mind is setting \pdfinclusioncopyfonts=1.
> Did you try that? --best, karl.

Many thanks Karl, that solves the problem immediately.

Knowing the answer, internet search points to the TeX FAQ which explains the issue in detail

https://texfaq.org/FAQ-pdf-fig-chars

So Illustrator must be doing some re-encoding of the fonts it embeds. So long as pdfTeX uses the embedded font (\pdfinclusioncopyfonts=1) things are OK, but once it uses the original TeX Live font (\pdfinclusioncopyfonts=0) the re-encoded glyphs are missing.

I'll think about consulting the FAQ next time.

I've no idea how you manage to know this many things about obscure TeX features. Very impressive. And most of all, very helpful. Thanks!

Bruno