I'm not entirely sure whether the PDF writer, the documentation, or my understanding is at fault here. However, given the trivial PostScript %! << /NeverEmbed [ ] >> setdistillerparams << /AlwaysEmbed [ /Helvetica ] >> setdistillerparams /Helvetica findfont 12 scalefont setfont 144 360 moveto (Hello, PostScript world) show showpage I would expect ps2pdf to embed Helvetica. It doesn't. Also, following the example in doc/Ps2pdf.htm, I would expect gs -dBATCH -dSAFER -DNOPAUSE -q -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=out.pdf -c '.setpdfwrite <</AlwaysEmbed [/Helvetica /Times-Roman]>> setdistillerparams' -f hello.ps to embed Helvetica. It doesn't. However ps2pdf -dPDFSETTINGS=/printer hello.ps does embed Helvetica, so all is not lost. Could either the documentation be made clearer, or attempts to clear the default NeverEmbed list be made more effective? Michael Rutter
I think there is some special-casing regarding embedding with the standard 13 fonts (of which Helvetica is certainly one of them - Times is a bit different as Times, Times-Roman are different fonts but made alias under some situations). I am not sure about the exact implementation - you'll have to refer to the distiller documentation - but I believe that Adobe Distiller does not embed the standard 13 even if AlwaysEmbed is specified, and ghostscript probably follows that. This is just my thoughts -
Whereas the PDF Reference Manual version 1.3 states, in 7.7.2, "[the base 14] fonts, or their font metrics and suitable substitution fonts, are guaranteed to be available to the Acrobat program", the PDF Reference, version 1.7, states, in 5.5.1 "Beginning with PDF 1.5, the special treatment given to the standard 14 fonts is deprecated. All fonts used in a PDF document should be represented using a complete font descriptor. For backwards capability, viewer applications must still provide the special treatment identified for the standard 14 fonts." I actually think it is better not to embed these fonts -- it leads to rather large file sizes. So I have no problem with lib/gs_pdfwr.ps setting /NeverEmbed .standardfonts by default. I am just confused that my attempts to over-ride this failed. Michael
Fixed in revision 9596, patch here: http://ghostscript.com/pipermail/gs-cvs/2009-March/009170.html