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

On Monday, 26 January 2026 00:30:18 GMT G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> 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

This is great Branden, thank you.

Cheers

Deri