[pdftex] Concise Summary of using TTF fonts?

[George N. White III]

On Thu, 10 Jan 2002, M. Wroth wrote:

> Has anyone written a concise summary of how to set up pdftex on Windows to
> use TrueType fonts in the pdf output?

It might help to mention WHY you want to do this. I would like to be able
to [tell Win32 and Mac OS9.x users how to] use TrueType unicode fonts,
e.g., with CJK TeX, but so far I have been recommending against using
TrueType fonts that have Type 1 clones (mostly so documents created
off-unix will be compatible with those created on unix machines). I gather
that some schemes for using TT fonts produce PDF's that print and display,
but don't support text search or cut-and-paste, so you should specify
whether you need these capabilities.  You should also mention whether
you need compatibility with TeX on platforms other than Win32.

If you want to use something other than CM fonts but want to use maths,
you might do better using one of the LaTeX styles based on the
"LaserWriter 35" fonts. In particular, MathTime (commercial), txr, pazo,
or pxr (all free).

> I know the subject has been discussed extensively, but it never quite made
> sense to me (partially because I wasn't trying to do it myself, I
> suspect).  Now I need to :-)

There have been some recipes posted to this list, but isn't always clear
what results you should expect, and many seem to require additional font
manipulation tools. I don't have regular access to Win32 or Apple systems
(I was supposed to have access to a shiny new PowerBook G4, but it doesn't
work and Apple can't seem to get organized to do anything about fixing
it), so I really rely on the list archives for solutions to non-unix
issues.

We have just started using Linux and UTF-8 (which is not yet supported on
our SGI Irix systems). The most common Adobe CID fonts for Japanese are
OpenType, which don't appear to be supported by the exising font
manipulation tools, so users are interested in using Unicode TT fonts
with TeX on Linux.

I hope this thread will include:

0.  discussion of when TT fonts should be used

1.  recipes for supporting Unicode TT fonts in pdftex

2.  information about the quality of the resulting PDF files:

    are they searchable and can you cut-and-paste to other apps?

    what versions of Acrobat Reader are needed to display the files
    correctly?

3.  discussion of compatibility with unix tools (font manipulation,
    xpdf, ghostscript) at both TeX source and PDF viewer levels

-- 
George N. White III <gnw3 at acm.org> Bedford Institute of Oceanography