How to generate pdf without any Type3 fonts?

Question

For a publisher I have to generate a pdf file which does not contain any Type3 fonts.

Until now I thought that using pdflatex on current LaTeX distributions should be enough to get a pdf file without any Type3 fonts, but for the current document this is not true:

$ pdffonts paper.pdf
name                                 type              emb sub uni object ID
------------------------------------ ----------------- --- --- --- ---------
ZFUCHW+NimbusRomNo9L-Medi            Type 1            yes yes no      41  0
VNQOQC+NimbusRomNo9L-Regu            Type 1            yes yes no      42  0
[none]                               Type 3            yes no  no      43  0
NXAFJF+NimbusRomNo9L-ReguItal        Type 1            yes yes no      46  0
CBNMRR+NimbusRomNo9L-MediItal        Type 1            yes yes no      48  0
MNSAJN+NimbusRomNo9L-Regu-Slant_167  Type 1            yes yes no      52  0
FJTKHV+CMSY7                         Type 1            yes yes no      53  0
VVITQE+CMMI9                         Type 1            yes yes no      54  0
CHSHRJ+CMR9                          Type 1            yes yes no      56  0
EAPUQB+CMR6                          Type 1            yes yes no      57  0
KBHVYI+CMMI6                         Type 1            yes yes no      58  0
EHULJT+CMTI9                         Type 1            yes yes no      59  0
JLLCEK+CMSY9                         Type 1            yes yes no      61  0
YEIEPQ+CMEX9                         Type 1            yes yes no      64  0
DFKMIY+CMSY8                         Type 1            yes yes no      84  0
NEDAGG+CMSY6                         Type 1            yes yes no      87  0
QDTWCG+MSBM10                        Type 1            yes yes no     127  0
[none]                               Type 3            yes no  no     198  0
OKAOPP+CMMI8                         Type 1            yes yes no     199  0
TIGOKK+CMR8                          Type 1            yes yes no     200  0
GWSFMB+CMTI8                         Type 1            yes yes no     201  0
[none]                               Type 3            yes no  no     397  0

I am surprised that all the Type3 fonts haven't a real name.

The document uses the sigplanconf documentclass. For figures only the tikz and listings packages are used (no graphicx package is used, i.e. no \includegraphics is used and no postscript files are embedded).

I am using Ubuntu 10.04 with TeX Live:

$ pdflatex --version
pdfTeX 3.1415926-1.40.10-2.2 (TeX Live 2009/Debian)

I have found an ACM FAQ about Type1 fonts, but it seems to be outdated and the suggested method still yield pdf files with Type3 fonts.

pk fonts: Looking for pk fonts in the doc.log find I found this ouput:

 75i,27n,56p,866b,2711s stack positions out of 5000i,500n,10000p,200000b,50000s
 </mnt/max/.texmf-var/fonts/pk/ljfour/jknappen/ec/ectt0800.600pk> </mnt/max/.texmf-var/fonts
 /pk/ljfour/jknappen/ec/ectt0900.600pk>{/usr/share/texmf-texlive/fonts/enc/dvips/base/8r.enc} 
 </mnt/max/.texmf-var/fonts/pk/ljfour/jknappen/ec/ecss0900.600pk>

What could be reasons for this? Is some font package missing? Or has it something to do with tikz?

Answer 1

Look at the end of the log-file of pdflatex. It will tell you which fonts are included and which are bitmap (pk) fonts.

Answer 2

First off, most people use pdflatex nowadays. Change every image to pdf if possible replacing eps files by pdf using

     convert file.eps file.pdf

convert is found in the imagemagick package. Remove epsfig and use includegraphics instead.

Next run:

     pdffonts final_upload_document.pdf | less

to ensure that a type 3 font problem is actually the issue. If it isn't then the problem is most likely related to spaces in file names.

Next run:

     pdffonts each_image.pdf

to find any type 3 fonts on the individual pdf files to find which image is causing the problem. It could be an xfig or matlab problem, or a problem from another image generator.

If the contained pdfs don't create the issue, then it is most likely an include such as blackboard fonts that is causing the problem inside the source latex file.

Using the above method I found in particular that xfig in addition to matlab can cause the same artefacts if you are using export to latex+pdf part.

When you find the pdf + latex file you can run:

  xfig -specialtext -latexfonts -startlatexFont default

to start up xfig with the right settings. You also might find as in my case that the xfig image was generated some years ago that was to go into the paper, and that it now doesn't even open in newer versions of xfig giving a sigsegv fault. In this case your only option is to regenerate the image using the above xfig call.

Answer 3

A Type 3 font is not by default a bitmap font. It means only not a Type 1 one. This is the reason why a Type 3 font can also be a vector font. If there is no listed pk font in the log file, then you have such a type 3 font included. It may also be loaded by an image with \includegraphics

Answer 4

When including graphics coming from matplotlib, they may contain a Type3 font. However, matplotlib can be instructed to use tex rendering and the correct font family:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

plt.rc('text', usetex=True)
plt.rc('font', family='serif')

Answer 5

I also had an issue with an image generated by matplotlib, and tried other suggestions proposed here but none of them really helped. What finally worked was an advice I found here (http://phyletica.org/matplotlib-fonts/):

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
plt.rcParams['pdf.fonttype'] = 42

After I regenerated images my PDF was finally free of Type3 fonts.

Answer 6

I solved this by adding the following command to the head of my latex file:

\pdfminorversion=4              % tell pdflatex to generate PDF in version 1.4

Answer 7

As a complement to the answer by Eamonn Kenny: once you have identified the offending figure containing the problematic font, opening it in Inkscape and exporting it to PDF with the export option "convert text to paths" gets rid of all fonts.

In my case, the publisher website still gave a vague error message, and the solution by Peter Pablo solved it finally: forcing PDF v1.4 ensured compatibility

N.B. I have too low a reputation to comment or upvote, hence this post.

Answer 8

cm-super did not work for me, as it turns out that the Type-3 fonts were loaded from the pictures. The easiest fix: just save your pdf file with Apple Preview or Adobe Reader and it will do the trick!

Answer 9

If you are using figures generated by matplotlib and these figures are the source of font type, there are two key settings: pdf.fonttype and ps.fonttype. You have to change these settings from the default of 3 to the alternative 42. You can do this in your matplotlibrc file with:

pdf.fonttype : 42
ps.fonttype : 42

Or, you can change these settings in your code using:

import matplotlib
matplotlib.rcParams['pdf.fonttype'] = 42