Re: Many fonts display; only one prints

On 2006-06-24, Warren Post <wpost@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Using ghostscript 8.15.1 on Mandriva Linux 2006, I can view postscript
files on screen with any installed viewer (gv 3.6.1, evince 0.4.0) and the
fonts appear fine. But the same files are printed using only one font, a
fixed width font that appears to be Courier.
[..]
I would guess that ghostscript isn't finding any fonts and is
substuting Courier.

How do you come to the conclusion that Ghostscript does not find any
fonts when Ghostscript finds them in the context of a viewer?

Do you know which fonts are missing and whether they are embedded
in your PostScript document or not? Does your printer understand
PostScript or is it converted to something else for printing?

The fonts Ghostscript is loading can be easily verified during a
conversion from PostScript to PDF. Example for a conversion from
out.ps to out.pdf:

thales$ gs -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=out.pdf -dBATCH out.ps
AFPL Ghostscript 8.51 (2005-04-18)
Copyright (C) 2005 artofcode LLC, Benicia, CA. All rights reserved.
This software comes with NO WARRANTY: see the file PUBLIC for details.
Loading NimbusRomNo9L-Regu font from /usr/local/share/ghostscript/fonts/n021003l.pfb... 2446152 1078726 1577288 279010 1 done.
Loading NimbusRomNo9L-Medi font from /usr/local/share/ghostscript/fonts/n021004l.pfb... 2523128 1200254 1577288 283488 1 done.
Loading NimbusRomNo9L-MediItal font from /usr/local/share/ghostscript/fonts/n021024l.pfb... 2640296 1318057 1597384 291060 1 done.
Loading NimbusRomNo9L-ReguItal font from /usr/local/share/ghostscript/fonts/n021023l.pfb... 2777560 1450039 1597384 298182 1 done.
Loading NimbusSanL-Regu font from /usr/local/share/ghostscript/fonts/n019003l.pfb... 2854536 1534203 1597384 302996 1 done.
Loading NimbusSanL-Bold font from /usr/local/share/ghostscript/fonts/n019004l.pfb... 2951608 1624977 1617480 310562 1 done.
Loading NimbusSanL-BoldItal font from /usr/local/share/ghostscript/fonts/n019024l.pfb... 3048680 1718444 1617480 314776 1 done.
Loading NimbusSanL-ReguItal font from /usr/local/share/ghostscript/fonts/n019023l.pfb... 3145752 1809593 1617480 318958 1 done.
Loading NimbusMonL-Regu font from /usr/local/share/ghostscript/fonts/n022003l.pfb... 3262920 1926376 1637576 326500 1 done.
Loading NimbusMonL-Bold font from /usr/local/share/ghostscript/fonts/n022004l.pfb... 3400184 2070550 1637576 330810 1 done.
Loading NimbusMonL-BoldObli font from /usr/local/share/ghostscript/fonts/n022024l.pfb... 3517352 2149618 1637576 267549 1 done.
Loading NimbusMonL-ReguObli font from /usr/local/share/ghostscript/fonts/n022023l.pfb... 3634520 2273405 1637576 271995 1 done.
Loading StandardSymL font from /usr/local/share/ghostscript/fonts/s050000l.pfb... 3674712 2311940 1637576 276489 1 done.
thales$

Once you have it in PDF format, you can easily get a summary of the
fonts used by invoking pdffonts:

thales$ pdffonts out.pdf
name type emb sub uni object ID
------------------------------------ ------------ --- --- --- ---------
Times-Roman Type 1 no no no 20 0
Helvetica Type 1 no no no 16 0
Courier-Bold Type 1 no no no 11 0
Helvetica-Bold Type 1 no no no 15 0
Courier-BoldOblique Type 1 no no no 10 0
Times-Bold Type 1 no no no 19 0
Helvetica-BoldOblique Type 1 no no no 14 0
Courier-Oblique Type 1 no no no 9 0
Times-BoldItalic Type 1 no no no 18 0
Helvetica-Oblique Type 1 no no no 13 0
Symbol Type 1 no no no 8 0
Times-Italic Type 1 no no no 17 0
Courier Type 1 no no no 12 0
thales$

Here you will see the names that were actually used. For example, for
``Times-Roman'' (one of the standard fonts) ``NimbusRomNo9L-Regu'' was
actually used by GhostScript (one of the URW fonts which work as
replacement of the original Times Roman font coming from Linotype).
In the ``emb'' column you see whether the font is embedded or not. In
this case, none of the fonts is embedded as all fonts are standard
fonts.

However, you can even embed standard fonts, if necessary, by applying a
conversion step with the option ``-dPDFSETTINGS=/printer'' (thanks again
to Bob Tennent and Phil who pointed this out in a parallel thread in
this group). Using following two conversions, you will get a PostScript
document named out2.ps that no longer requires any fonts to be installed
at the printers side:

gs -dPDFSETTINGS=/printer -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite \
-sOutputFile=out.pdf -dBATCH out.ps
gs -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pswrite -sOutputFile=out2.ps -dBATCH out.pdf

Andreas.
.

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