From: Aron Roberts (aron@socrates.berkeley.edu)
Date: Tue Apr 01 2003 - 10:22:22 PST
Hi Pat,
At 9:48 -0800 2003-04-01, Pat Soberanis wrote:
>This is a long shot, but here goes:
>
>A professor is applying for a grant via a PDF form. The "unequals"
>sign (= with a slash through it) is in the title of his study, which
>he created in Word, but he can't make the PDF form accept the
>character. He has Acrobat 5.0 and has tried it on a Mac and a PC (I
>don't know the keystroke(s) he used). Apparently, PDFs recognize
>fewer characters than Word does. Does anyone happen to know how to
>make an unequals sign in a PDF form?
It is possible that the missing symbol in your professor's title
*may* have resulted from not having the necessary font embedded in
the PDF document.
There is a readable discussion of this topic at the Planet PDF Web
site (a highly recommended site for those producing or using PDFs):
Shlomo Perets
"PDF Best Practices #4: Fonts Can Make or Break PDFs
Intelligent use determines display and/or printing success"
4 February 2002
http://www.planetpdf.com/mainpage.asp?webpageid=1882
A key point in the article:
>When graphic fidelity is important, a PDF file should be produced so
>that all fonts used in it are embedded.
Because font embedding can significantly increase the size of the
document, the article also mentions the related 'font subsetting'
option, which can embed just the characters used in the PDF document,
and discusses the merits and drawbacks of doing so.
To the best of my knowledge, the font embedding and subsetting
options are available in both Adobe Acrobat's PDFWriter printer
driver, and in the Adobe Acrobat Distiller application.
Aron Roberts
Workstation Software Support Group
P.S. As background, there is also a long and highly technical
description of how fonts are handled in the PDF creation process at:
"How Acrobat Distiller and Acrobat PDFWriter Handle Fonts"
Adobe Support Knowledgebase, Document 319266
http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/12f6e.htm
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