[texhax] Distiller fails to convert ps to pdf, missing Helvetica, Zapf Dingbats

Jeremy jeremy at acjlaw.net
Fri Jun 25 04:39:32 CEST 2010


Hi,

I have a form created using latex with hyperref and eform packages.
The form is in Helvetica font and the various widgets for text input
use helvetica font for text and numbers, and Zapf Dingbats for symbols
such as check marks and  radio buttons.

I am able to convert my latex file to pdf on linux using either dvips
or dvipdfm. However, I need to use Adobe Reader restricted features
such as saving. So I bought Acrobat 9.0 Pro Extended for my Windows XP
laptop, thinking I could use Acrobat to activate extended features for
my pdf. And indeed my pdf now has extended features in Windows. But as
soon as I copy/email/rsync the file over to my linux desktop, Reader
says the file has been modified and therefore extended features are no
longer available and to contact the document's author for the original
unmodified pdf. So it looks like  using Acrobat to enable extended
features in a pdf for Reader is buggy. I can copy back the pdf from
Linux to Windows and lo and behold the extended features are re-enabled
in Reader for Windows. But I need my form to work on any OS, not just
Windows.

So instead of creating the pdf entirely on my Linux desktop, I decided
to just create the postscript (using dvips driver) and then use
Acrobat Distiller to create the pdf on Windows.

But Acrobat is unable to distill my postscript file to pdf,
complaining about two missing fonts: Helvetica and Zapf Dingbats (both
apparently used by hyperref/eforms for creating widgets).

I cannot seem to force these fonts to be embedded in my postscript:

latex form.tex
dvips -Pdownload35 -Ppdf -Pamz -Pcmz -G0 form.dvi
ps2pdf form.ps
pdffonts form.pdf

name                                 type              emb sub uni
object ID
------------------------------------ ----------------- --- --- --- ---------
ZapfDingbats                         Type 1            no  no  no 12  0
Helvetica                            Type 1            no  no  no 15  0
ENZHHN+NimbusSanL-ReguItal           Type 1C           yes yes no 194  0
BDENKY+NimbusSanL-Regu               Type 1C           yes yes no 25  0
SEKMAF+NimbusSanL-Bold               Type 1C           yes yes no 22  0

My Linux desktop is running Gentoo with complete dev-texlive/texlive-
latex-2009 installed.
I also have MiKTeX installed on my Windows laptop.
There is a setting "LW35 URWkb" in /usr/share/texmf/web2c/updmap.cfg
--- I don't know if using ADOBE or ADOBEkb would make a difference.
I have "dvipsDownloadBase35 false" per default, but I override that
setting on the command line.

Thanks for any help.


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