Chapter 14
Fonts

14.1 Listing Fonts

The -list-fonts operation prints the fonts in the document, one-per-line to standard output. For example:

1 /F245 /Type0 /Cleargothic-Bold /Identity-H
1 /F247 /Type0 /ClearGothicSerialLight /Identity-H
1 /F248 /Type1 /Times-Roman /WinAnsiEncoding
1 /F250 /Type0 /Cleargothic-RegularItalic /Identity-H
2 /F13 /Type0 /Cleargothic-Bold /Identity-H
2 /F16 /Type0 /Arial-ItalicMT /Identity-H
2 /F21 /Type0 /ArialMT /Identity-H
2 /F58 /Type1 /Times-Roman /WinAnsiEncoding
2 /F59 /Type0 /ClearGothicSerialLight /Identity-H
2 /F61 /Type0 /Cleargothic-BoldItalic /Identity-H
2 /F68 /Type0 /Cleargothic-RegularItalic /Identity-H
3 /F47 /Type0 /Cleargothic-Bold /Identity-H
3 /F49 /Type0 /ClearGothicSerialLight /Identity-H
3 /F50 /Type1 /Times-Roman /WinAnsiEncoding
3 /F52 /Type0 /Cleargothic-BoldItalic /Identity-H
3 /F54 /Type0 /TimesNewRomanPS-BoldItalicMT /Identity-H
3 /F57 /Type0 /Cleargothic-RegularItalic /Identity-H
4 /F449 /Type0 /Cleargothic-Bold /Identity-H
4 /F451 /Type0 /ClearGothicSerialLight /Identity-H
4 /F452 /Type1 /Times-Roman /WinAnsiEncoding

The first column gives the page number, the second the internal unique font name, the third the type of font (Type1, TrueType etc), the fourth the PDF font name, the fifth the PDF font encoding.

The information is also available in JSON format with -list-fonts-json:

[
  {
    "page": 1,
    "name": "/F47",
    "subtype": "/Type1",
    "basefont": "/XYPLPB+NimbusSanL-Bold",
    "encoding": null
  },
  {
    "page": 1,
    "name": "/F50",
    "subtype": "/Type0",
    "basefont": "/MCBERL+URWPalladioL-Roma",
    "encoding": "/Identity-H"
  }
]

14.2 Listing characters in a font

We can use cpdf to find out which characters are available in a given font, and to print the map between character codes, unicode codepoints, and Adobe glyph names. This is presently a best-effort service, and does not cover all font/encoding types.

We find the name of the font by using -list-fonts:

$ ./cpdf -list-fonts cpdfmanual.pdf 1
1 /F46 /Type1 /XYPLPB+NimbusSanL-Bold
1 /F49 /Type1 /MCBERL+URWPalladioL-Roma

We may then print the table, giving either the font’s name (e.g /F46) or basename (e.g /XYPLPB+NimbusSanL-Bold):

$ ./cpdf -print-font-table /XYPLPB+NimbusSanL-Bold
         -print-font-table-page 1 cpdfmanual.pdf
67 = U+0043 (C - LATIN CAPITAL LETTER C) = /C
68 = U+0044 (D - LATIN CAPITAL LETTER D) = /D
70 = U+0046 (F - LATIN CAPITAL LETTER F) = /F
71 = U+0047 (G - LATIN CAPITAL LETTER G) = /G
76 = U+004C (L - LATIN CAPITAL LETTER L) = /L
80 = U+0050 (P - LATIN CAPITAL LETTER P) = /P
84 = U+0054 (T - LATIN CAPITAL LETTER T) = /T
97 = U+0061 (a - LATIN SMALL LETTER A) = /a
99 = U+0063 (c - LATIN SMALL LETTER C) = /c
100 = U+0064 (d - LATIN SMALL LETTER D) = /d
101 = U+0065 (e - LATIN SMALL LETTER E) = /e
104 = U+0068 (h - LATIN SMALL LETTER H) = /h
105 = U+0069 (i - LATIN SMALL LETTER I) = /i
108 = U+006C (l - LATIN SMALL LETTER L) = /l
109 = U+006D (m - LATIN SMALL LETTER M) = /m
110 = U+006E (n - LATIN SMALL LETTER N) = /n
111 = U+006F (o - LATIN SMALL LETTER O) = /o
112 = U+0070 (p - LATIN SMALL LETTER P) = /p
114 = U+0072 (r - LATIN SMALL LETTER R) = /r
115 = U+0073 (s - LATIN SMALL LETTER S) = /s
116 = U+0074 (t - LATIN SMALL LETTER T) = /t

The first column is the character code, the second the Unicode codepoint, the character itself and its Unicode name, and the third the Adobe glyph name.

14.3 Copying Fonts

In order to use a font other than the standard 14 with -add-text, it must be added to the file. The font source PDF is given, together with the font’s resource name on a given page, and that font is copied to all the pages in the input file’s range, and then written to the output file.

The font is named in the output file with its basefont name, so it can be easily used with -add-text.

For example, if the file fromfile.pdf has a font /GHLIGA+c128 with the name /F10 on page 1 (this information can be found with -list-fonts), the following would copy the font to the file in.pdf on all pages, writing the output to out.pdf:

Text in this font can then be added by giving -font /GHLIGA+c128. Be aware that due to the vagaries of PDF font handling concerning which characters are present in the source font, not all characters may be available, or cpdf may not be able to work out the conversion from UTF8 to the font’s own encoding. You may add -raw to the command line to avoid any conversion, but the encoding (mapping from input codes to glyphs) may be non-obvious and require knowledge of the PDF format to divine.

14.4 Removing Fonts

To remove embedded fonts from a document, use -remove-fonts. PDF readers will substitute local fonts for the missing fonts. The use of this function is only recommended when file size is the sole consideration.

14.5 Missing Fonts

The -missing-fonts operation lists any unembedded fonts in the document, one per line.

The format is

The operation -embed-missing-fonts will process the file with gs (which must be installed) to embed missing fonts (where found):

Note: putting a PDF file through gs in this manner may not be lossless: some metadata may not be preserved.

14.6 Extracting Fonts

We may extract a font file by giving the page number and the PDF font resource name, as printed by -list-fonts or -list-fonts-json. For example, for the TrueType font /F50 on page 5: