How do I switch between Vector and Raster (bitmap) Fonts?

Question

Q. What do you exactly need?

A. I need to compile twice one and the same document in PDFLaTeX using

• vector fonts from CM-Super package
• standard raster Computer Modern fonts

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Q. Why do you need that?

A. Because CM-Super fonts are produced by auto-tracing. They are suitable for on-screen reading, but not quite for print.

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Q. But then why not use AMS-BlueSky fonts or Latin Modern?

A. They either do not have Cyrillic letters, or if they have, they are of rather poor quality, and do not have optical sizes.

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I have a solution - using two instances of MiKTeX Portable. One having all needed vector fonts packages, and the other with all these packages removed. Then having two PDFLaTeX profiles in the editor - on for every MiKTeX Portable instance.

But that solution is not convenient...

Answer 1

Calling the compilation of file.tex with

pdflatex "\pdfmapfile{}\input{file}"

won't read any map file and so use the pk files, possibly generating them. I don't find, however, that the CM-Super fonts aren't suitable for print.

If you need Type1 fonts other than CM, make a copy of pdftex.map, call it mypdftex.map and edit it to erase all fonts you don't want. Then put the file in the suitable search paths (the work directory is OK) and call

pdflatex "\pdfmapfile{mypdfmap.map}\input{file}"

If I compile in that way the simple file

\documentclass{standalone}
\begin{document}
abc $abc$ \emph{abc} \textbf{abc}
\end{document}

I get this

You can download the small pdf and see it's made with bitmap fonts.

Answer 2

(A little bit too long for a comment):

I'd suggest to solve your underlying problem a different way: by choosing a high-quality vector fontset that includes all the character sets that you need. For example the MinionPro package supports Latin, Greek & Cyrillic and activates a matching set of mathematical symbols. Everything is optically scaled. I can't really comment on the quality of the cyrillic but it looks decent to me in the limited cases I've used it (see for example reference 23 on page 129 here).

Answer 3

(Also too long for a comment):

“Suitable for on-screen reading” turns out to be a lot more complicated than I’d imagined; the “P” in “PDF” seems to be a delusion, and some company called Adobe seems unclear on the whole concept. I was stunned to find that my doctoral thesis, whose normal text looks fine in Preview on a Mac or Goodreader on the iPda, looks utterly appalling in Adobe Reader 10.0.0 or 7.1.0, with, for instance, a laughably low horizontal in the lower case e. Admittedly my setup is quite odd (XeTeX, ucharclasses, 12pt, and CMU Serif, among other things), but even a simple test case with TexLive 2010 Xetex and amsfonts in Texmaker was still appalling.

Reverting to 10pt helped substantially for Mac Adobe Reader. So does zooming and reverting to 100%. Adobe Reader 7.0.9 on Windows XP or Vista doesn’t look bad in either 10pt or 12pt. 10pt text at 100% in Okular 0.8.2 on Ubuntu is less text than a smudge; 12pt is readable but horrifying.

I think all of my tests used the supposedly high-quality BlueSky bitmaps; the simple 12pt case just used XeLaTeX with:

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}
\usepackage{ucs}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{amsfonts}
\usepackage{amssymb}