On Thu, 27 Jul 2000, Lex Jenkins wrote:
> That may be David Brooks. He's persuaded me of the benefits of the PDF
> format, if for no better reason than because it gives you complete control
> over the appearance of the end product. Unlike HTML, it supposedly isn't
> susceptible to arbitrary changes by various browsers, OSs and hardware.
>
> However, I have seen, and heard reports of, supposedly locked-in PDF files
> not coming out quite as the author intended. So I'm only partially
> persuaded for now.
The problem boils down to how to store fonts in the PDF document.
Should the PDF generator include a copy of the font (thereby risking
copyright infringement when some enterprising hacker finds a way to rip
it out of the document), convert the individual letters into shapes so
that each page becomes one big vector drawing (makes the document much
bigger) or just put commands in that say "this bit of text is in a font
called <font name>" and hope that the viewer has access to a copy of
that font? The latter satisfies the copyright security and file size
requirements, but defeats the whole object of letting the document
creator have total control over the appearance of the document - to be
sure that the document will be readable by anybody, they must use only
the basic fonts which are common to all machines (Times & Arial in the
case of Windows machines, which are identical enough to Times &
Helvetica on Macs or Trinity and Homerton on RISC OS). If you get a
document which contains references to fonts you haven't got, all the
reader can do is try and map it to one you do have, with unpredictable
and usually unpleasant results on the formatting of the document.
--
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