This problem crops up for various applications, but most recently was encountered by the author of pdftex. It seems to be fixed in recent versions, but many linux distros (even Fedora 7) still provide older versions so in practice many users are stuck with the problem. Using etex+dvipdfm from TeX LIve 2007 to create a .pdf file on Fedora 7 linux: $ cat t2.tex\nopagenumbers \font\f=bchb8y\f A \bye $ etex t2 This is pdfTeXk, Version 3.141592-1.40.3 (Web2C 7.5.6) %&-line parsing enabled. entering extended mode (./t2.tex [1] ) Output written on t2.dvi (1 page, 204 bytes). Transcript written on t2.log. $ dvipdfm t2 t2.dvi -> t2.pdf [1] 16224 bytes written $ pdffonts t2.pdfname type emb sub uni object ID ------------------------------------ ------------ --- --- --- --------- HZFXHS+CharterBT-Bold Type 1 yes yes no 10 0 $ pdfinfo t2.pdf Creator: TeX output 2007.06.30:1205 Producer: dvipdfm 0.13.2c, Copyright © 1998, by Mark A. Wicks CreationDate: Sat Jun 30 12:06:27 2007 Tagged: no Pages: 1 Encrypted: no Page size: 612 x 792 pts (letter) File size: 16224 bytes Optimized: no PDF version: 1.2 $ /usr/bin/gsx t2.pdf ESP Ghostscript 815.04 (2007-03-14) Copyright (C) 2004 artofcode LLC, Benicia, CA. All rights reserved. This software comes with NO WARRANTY: see the file PUBLIC for details. Processing pages 1 through 1. Page 1 **** Embedded font uses undefined procedure RD [..] The file displays correctly. Newer versions (e.g., gs-8.60) and other pdf viewers do not complain, so this seems to be a bug in ghostscript.
Created attachment 3101 [details] pdf file using Bitstream Charter Bold "A" TeX source: \nopagenumbers \font\f=bchb8y\f A \bye
I confirm that this was a bug in Ghostscript, although the font deserves special mentioning for writing its own procedures to userdict. The bug has been fixed in revision 6445. This revision went into v. 8.54 and up. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 688464 ***