Character substitution TTF -> PDF?

Subject: Character substitution TTF -> PDF?
From: "Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 12 Jul 2002 09:55:20 -0400


Simon Haines reports: <<Has anyone else encountered a problem producing PDFs
(feeding postscript to distiller) whereby the characters of some TrueTypes
are mangled? The fonts *look* the same, but the characters are different:
"Howdy" becomes "Qot=j" for instance. It only occurs with particular
non-'standard' TTFs, which I'm assured ARE licensed.>>

This isn't a problem with the printer driver, or at least not in the way
you'd think. The biggest part of the problem is that Acrobat still does not
reliably handle TrueType fonts, and I suspect the divide between older fonts
and newer Unicode versions exacerbates the problem. Ideally, you should use
only PostScript Type 1 fonts with Acrobat, and the Adobe PS print driver.

If you're forced to use TrueType, look for a Distiller option that lets you
"encode" the fonts as "Type 42". I have a note from a talk by a local PDF
expert that claims the details of minimizing problems with TrueType are
described in Adobe Technical Support Document 32048, but I haven't taken the
time to check Adobe's site to see if that's the correct one. If you go to
that trouble, please report the results (a URL) to techwr-l so others can
benefit from the solution.

--Geoff Hart, geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada
580 boul. St-Jean
Pointe-Claire, Que., H9R 3J9 Canada
"User's advocate" online monthly at
www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/usersadvocate.html
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a
personality, and an obnoxious one at that."--Kim Roper


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