At 2026-01-20T13:48:52+0000, Deri wrote: > First, a little introduction on how gropdf interacts with fonts. There > are 3 different service levels:- [snip]
This is invaluable information, Deri!
In my working copy, I've turned it into a new subsection of the
gropdf(1) man page, immediately following "Typefaces".
URW font support
The traditional PostScript Type 1 fonts are limited in their glyph
repertoire, and the original versions from the Adobe foundry are
not free software. Historically, because their presence was
mandated by the PostScript standard, one could expect to find
support for them in any conforming device or software PostScript
renderer. PostScript (“Level 1”) initially standardized 14
typefaces: Times, Helvetica, and Courier each in four styles (which
groff groups into “families”); a symbol font; and a dingbats font.
PostScript Level 2 increased the number to 35, adding the families
Avant Garde, Bookman, Helvetica Narrow, New Century Schoolbook, and
Palatino; and a text font in one style, Zapf Chancery medium
italic. A document could be small because it did not need to embed
font resources unless it had unusual (for the time) glyph or
typeface requirements. This situation carried over into the early
years of PostScript’s successor page description language, PDF.
Nowadays, it is common to embed fonts in PDFs, and authorities
widely recommend this practice, which increases the reliability of
document rendering, and many free software fonts are available with
much greater glyph coverage than Adobe’s Type 1 fonts for
PostScript.
gropdf attempts to work in variety of scenarios, and delivers
better results when configured with supporting digital font files
(for embedding) and font metrics files describing those fonts to
the formatter.
• Full service is available when gropdf can locate all 35
fonts of the PostScript Level 2 standard on the file system
along with their corresponding font metrics (AFM) files.
The Adobe‐compatible unnamed foundry supports up to 256
glyphs in each typeface. Fonts from the URW foundry (“U”)
are compatible extensions of the Adobe fonts with extended
glyph coverage, including support for Cyrillic script.
• Intermediate service is available when gropdf can locate all
35 fonts of the PostScript Level 2 standard but not their
corresponding font metrics (AFM) files. Glyph coverage is
reduced to 256 glyphs maximum from each face, and the “U”
foundry is unavailable.
• Basic service results when gropdf cannot locate all 35 fonts
of the PostScript Level 2 standard. Only the base 14 fonts
of the PDF standard are available, and only in the sense
that the formatter can use their metrics. Use of the -e
option to embed fonts in the generated PDF results in an
error.
Regards,
Branden
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