New gropdf(1) man page subsection: URW font support (was: groff 1.24.0.rc1 on Manjaro 23)

"G. Branden Robinson" <[email protected]> Sun, 25 Jan 2026 18:30:18 -0600
Newsgroups	gmane.comp.printing.groff.general
Message-ID	<20260126003018.gzhuj7h5ptuzkfht@illithid>
At 2026-01-20T13:48:52+0000, Deri wrote:
> First, a little introduction on how gropdf interacts with fonts. There
> are 3 different service levels:-
[snip]

This is invaluable information, Deri!

In my working copy, I've turned it into a new subsection of the
gropdf(1) man page, immediately following "Typefaces".

   URW font support
     The traditional PostScript Type 1 fonts are limited in their glyph
     repertoire, and the original versions from the Adobe foundry are
     not free software.  Historically, because their presence was
     mandated by the PostScript standard, one could expect to find
     support for them in any conforming device or software PostScript
     renderer.  PostScript (“Level 1”) initially standardized 14
     typefaces: Times, Helvetica, and Courier each in four styles (which
     groff groups into “families”); a symbol font; and a dingbats font.
     PostScript Level 2 increased the number to 35, adding the families
     Avant Garde, Bookman, Helvetica Narrow, New Century Schoolbook, and
     Palatino; and a text font in one style, Zapf Chancery medium
     italic.  A document could be small because it did not need to embed
     font resources unless it had unusual (for the time) glyph or
     typeface requirements.  This situation carried over into the early
     years of PostScript’s successor page description language, PDF.
     Nowadays, it is common to embed fonts in PDFs, and authorities
     widely recommend this practice, which increases the reliability of
     document rendering, and many free software fonts are available with
     much greater glyph coverage than Adobe’s Type 1 fonts for
     PostScript.

     gropdf attempts to work in variety of scenarios, and delivers
     better results when configured with supporting digital font files
     (for embedding) and font metrics files describing those fonts to
     the formatter.

     •      Full service is available when gropdf can locate all 35
            fonts of the PostScript Level 2 standard on the file system
            along with their corresponding font metrics (AFM) files.
            The Adobe‐compatible unnamed foundry supports up to 256
            glyphs in each typeface.  Fonts from the URW foundry (“U”)
            are compatible extensions of the Adobe fonts with extended
            glyph coverage, including support for Cyrillic script.

     •      Intermediate service is available when gropdf can locate all
            35 fonts of the PostScript Level 2 standard but not their
            corresponding font metrics (AFM) files.  Glyph coverage is
            reduced to 256 glyphs maximum from each face, and the “U”
            foundry is unavailable.

     •      Basic service results when gropdf cannot locate all 35 fonts
            of the PostScript Level 2 standard.  Only the base 14 fonts
            of the PDF standard are available, and only in the sense
            that the formatter can use their metrics.  Use of the -e
            option to embed fonts in the generated PDF results in an
            error.

Regards,
Branden
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