PDF for Linux: merge subsets of fonts and replace Type 3 with Type 1

Question

I have a PDF file that I would like to process on Linux. In particular, I would like to:

• Replace Type 3 fonts with Type 1 fonts
• Replace multiple subsets of the same font with one subset (the subsets are the result of including numbers in LaTeX, where each figure contains the font of the subset)

On Windows, these two steps are possible with Adobe Distiller (open the document file and print it into a new PDF document with the appropriate settings).

On Linux, I can multiply fonts with Ghostscript ^[1] but it seems like it cannot replace Type 3 fonts (all?) With Type 1 fonts or combine multiple subsets of the same font.

Any tips on how I can accomplish these two tasks with free tools?

(I know the answer How to convert a Type 3 font to a Type 1 font to PDF . However, I don't care if I theoretically lose the font information, as this conversation seems to work fine in Distiller).

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[1] With arguments:

gs -dPDFA -dSAFER -dNOPLATFONTS -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH \ -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 \ -dPDFSETTINGS=/printer -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 \ -dMaxSubsetPct=100 -dSubsetFonts=true \ -dEmbedAllFonts=true -sOutputFile=/tmp/tmp.pdf -f "$1" 

Answer 1

Somehow, I doubt your statement, "With Windows, these two steps are possible with Adobe Distiller." I needed to see with my own eyes that this works before I can believe it. This is especially true for "replacing multiple subsets of the same font with single subsets." (But I am not able to check or falsify the expression myself right now ... so I will just take it for a while.)

Type 3 fonts are described in the full version of PostScript. Type 1 fonts are described using a subset of the PostScript language.

Replacing embedded fonts is not a trivial task when processing PDF files. I am not familiar with any Ghostscript-related utility that could do this.

callassoftware.com has a very powerful command line utility for sale called pdfToolbox CLI 4 . It is available for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and Solaris. pdfToolbox4 is able to provide almost everything you can imagine in the so-called PDF preview jobs. This includes not embedding subsets of fonts and re-embedding them with their full sets (do this in two separate steps so that you can create the desired result).

As for the only tool, I can think of things that can help you. (BTW, part of callas pre-sale technology, is licensed by Adobe to be positioned in Acrobat 9 Pro as its own preview tool ...)