CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pdfpdfaecrion
0xDEAD BEEF
0xDEAD BEEF

Reputation: 2104

Generated PDF/A size very big

We have system that generates PDF documents (using Ecrion engine). We are using Times fonts. Now there is requirement for document archiving, so we are switching from PDF to PDF/A and changing our fonts from Times to Times New Roman (same fonts). And here is where problem arrises - each PDF/A includes also used fonts (because PDF/A is PDF for archiving so it comes together with fonts). Problem is that each document now includes "Times New Roman", "Times New Roman Italic", "Times New Roman Bold" fonts and this causes document size to grow by 1.5MB and more, because each wont weights ~600KB. This just does not sound reasonable. Are there some other smaller fonts or how does pro-people deal with this problem?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1227

Answers (3)

Markus
Markus

Reputation: 16

The Ecrion engine will indeed perform font subsetting by default. However font files grow in size with every release of Windows as Microsoft ads more scripts (characters in other languages), hinting information (how to draw the font on various resolutions), ligature information (how characters combine to form a single character, for example f and i in many fonts combine to form the 'fi' ligature ), and more. Even if only a subset of the font is embedded in the final PDF, may still be quite large.

An easy solution is to use an "older" font that doesn't have all this information in it. Find the font in C:\Windows\Fonts, for example times.ttf in an older version of Windows (for example Windows XP or Windows Server 2003) and copy it to your computer in a folder (for example C:\MyFonts). Then, install the folder as a private font in Ecrion.

Upvotes: 0

user18428
user18428

Reputation: 1201

As Bobrovsky said, you can subset the embedded fonts, see http://www.ecrion.com/products/xfrenderingserver/xfultrascalehelp/page_settings.htm

The relevent option seems to be : pdf-embed-true-type-fonts=subset

Upvotes: 0

Bobrovsky
Bobrovsky

Reputation: 14246

As far as I know, it's not required to include complete font file in a PDF/A-compatible document. Only actually used glyphs are required to be embedded.

Even the whole codepage (255 glyps) versus all possible codepages (65K glyphs) can make a difference.

So, you might want to find a way to enable such behavior in Ecrion or try to use some other software that can embed only used glyphs or can strip unused ones from existing PDF/A.

Upvotes: 3

Related Questions