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2007/7/20, Frank Küster <frank@kuesterei.ch>:
> Dear TeXLive experts,
>
> I hope you can help us in a discussion we had on a Debian list.
>
> Javier Fernández-Sanguino Peña <jfs@computer.org> wrote:
> ...
> I know about the Adobe recommendations because they were given as the
> reason for "pdftexDownloadBase14 true" in teTeX 3.0, but I never
> actually read this recommendation and rationale. Can anyone help out?
> ...
> So, no, Times and Helvetica are not present on my system and used,
> instead the URW free replacements are used. Which are a quite good
> replacement, but not exactly the same.
>
The fonts should always be embedded because the fonts with the same
name differ in different platform and even in different versions of
Acrobat Reader. And some of these fonts may be missing on some
platforms. I often see PDF documents (mainly created by MS
applications and without fonts) where on my OS/2 computer the fonts
are replaced with some generic Multiple Master Font which sometimes
looks quite ugly. Even Type 1 fonts as Times Romad and Helvetica, that
should be always identical, are different. If accented characters are
created by means of virtual fonts, the accents are shifted in some
versions of Acrobat Reader even two characters to the right. Small
caps have different metrics too. In some versions of Acrobat Reader
most interword spaces disappear. Characters C and S in Adobe licensed
Times Roman installed in OS/2 as well as that resident in HP printers
conform to TFM in TeX distributions but some phototypesetters contain
Times Roman with considerably wider C and S.
People operating the phototypesetters told me that the fonts must
always be embedded becouse I can never know what is in the
phototypesetter an it is even possible that a different font with the
same name remains there from a previous job. In fact they first run
the PDF through a est program which complains if the fonts are not
embedded.
I spoiled a few documents by not embedding Times and Helvetica :-(
> Regards, Frank
> --
> Frank Küster
> Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
> Debian Developer (teTeX/TeXLive)
>
--
Zdeněk Wagner
http://hroch486.icpf.cas.cz/wagner/
http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz
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