Working with Acrobat Distiller, fonts, and more

The Adobe® Acrobat® Distiller® application converts PostScript language page descriptions into Portable Document Format (PDF) files. The Acrobat Distiller control interface, present in version 7 and later of Acrobat Distiller for the Macintosh and Microsoft Windows platforms, allows other applications to programmatically control the Distiller program.

Fonts are an important consideration whether you are an application developer writing applications capable of embedding fonts or accessing embedded fonts within a file or using Distiller with font technology.

The documents below describe the guidelines that are followed whenever Adobe software considers whether to embed fonts in files, whether through initial creation or transformation of existing files. There are also documents describing the Acrobat Distiller control interface, Distiller considerations for finding, embedding, and subsetting fonts, font metrics by platform and CMaps by language, and advanced user features in Acrobat.

Acrobat Distiller API Reference
Get the description of Distiller API messages and command line options for use with Microsoft® Windows® and Apple events for use with Mac OS.

Font Embedding Guidelines for Adobe Third-party Developers (PDF, 165k)
Know the guidelines meant for Adobe® third-party application developers, to write applications capable of embedding fonts in a file or accessing embedded fonts within a file. (June 2008)

Batch Sequences
Learn some of the principles of writing a batch sequence that uses the Execute JavaScript batch command. With these principles in mind, and knowledge of the JavaScript API for Acrobat, you will be able to write your own batch sequences. In addition, get access to some batch sequence examples, which you can also modify to suit your needs.

Sample sequences used in the Batch Sequences document (Windows®, ZIP, 17k)

PDF Open Parameters (PDF, 106k)

Get the PDF Open parameters for Acrobat 9.0. These allow you to open a PDF file using a URL or command that specifies both the file to be opened plus actions to be performed once the file is opened. (Jun 2008)

Font metrics for PDF Core 14 fonts
Macintosh (SIT/HQX, 127k)
Windows (ZIP, 124k)
UNIX® (TAR, 639k)

CMaps for PDF 1.4 CJK fonts
Chinese Simplified (ZIP, 418k)
Chinese Traditional (ZIP, 391k)
Japanese (ZIP, 232k)
Korean (ZIP, 253k)

pdfmark Reference
Get the description of the syntax and use of the pdfmark operator, and examples of many of the features that can be implemented using pdfmark.

Adobe PDF Creation Settings
Get the description of each setting that can appear in the settings file, including the existing Distiller parameters as well as new settings that are private to individual applications. Also learn how settings files can be shared between applications, and other topics relevant to the use of settings files.

ToUnicode Mapping File Tutorial (PDF, 576k)
Learn to construct a ‘ToUnicode’ mapping file for CID-keyed fonts. ToUnicode tables enable text search and other lexical operations for fonts with non-standard encodings. (May 2003)

Acrobat Widths-Only CIDFont Font Tutorial (PDF, 137k)
Learn to create Widths-Only CID-keyed fonts for use with Distiller. Used for fonts that cannot be embedded in PDF files, so that metrics is correct. (May 2003)