Font Gurus, There's a debate raging in our company right now about the use of Arial and Helvetica in FOP produced PDF. After careful examination of both fonts, I can see absolutely no difference, even though Helvetica has minor but distinguishable differences from Arial.
I'm using the information on this website to distinguish between the two fonts: http://www.ms-studio.com/articlesarialsid.html It appears to me that Helvetica is actually Arial in the PDF. Even when I have Acrobat Reader 5.0 list the fonts, it says Helvetica maps to ArialMT. So, my question is: is this a problem with FOP or Acrobat Reader? Is Helvetica something that Acrobat Reader renders or did FOP use Arial for the Helvetica font? I'm not exactly sure how fonts work in PDF, but I've read Helvetica comes standard with PDF. I find it strange that Helvetica is mapping to Arial though. I'd appreciate any background information you could give me on this subject! Actually, what it boils down to is this: why bloat the PDF with embedded Arial, when Helvetica is exactly the same font IMHO? Thanks, Scott
