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petert83669965
petert83669965
Participant
January 23, 2016
Answered

Remove CID font

  • January 23, 2016
  • 2 replies
  • 19840 views

Hi,

I created a PDF form that sends to user who fills it. Then the document sends to printercompany who prints out the PDF document.

The printig Company sends back the PDF and say they can not print because it is the CID font in the document.


"OK, the CID fonts is an adobe construction that uses another font table than regular fonts. In our print process included an optimization step where the font replacement copies of shared resources and where the problem arises. Character table of a CID font is not the same as other fonts. Both TrueType, OpenType, and PostScript using the same font tables."


A colleague has shrunk the file with an external program, but the CID font is left.

I've Googled but can not find how to remove the CID font from Adobe Acrobat Pro DC.

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Test Screen Name

Find another printer, they are trying to make you jump through hoops because their software doesn't work. CID fonts are normal everyday things, often used for all kinds of text.

2 replies

Dov Isaacs
Dov Isaacs
Legend
January 24, 2016

On behalf of Adobe, confirming the response vis-a-vis CID fonts. CD fonts have been part of the PDF specification for many years and any RIP, DFE, or PDF workflow software of any recent vintage should be able to handle those fonts.

 

Either the folks at that printer company are using ancient pre-21st century tools or they are ignorant of the capabilities of their tools and workflows.

 

- Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)
    E
    Eyrei
    Participant
    January 9, 2019

    I work for a company that does printing/mailing and I think there is more going on here than the original question describes.  It is common for printing vendors to be blamed for technical issues that are not their's to solve. It is amazing how people jump to conclusions about companies using inferior tools when there is often another explanation.

    The original poster should have made sure he/she had all fonts properly embedded and with a cmap available, because in my experience, the source of problems like this is the designer of the document and not the printing or mailing company.  This is essentially what the printer pointed out in their response.  I hope the end-customer did not fire the printing company, because the designer is the likely culprit.

    It is common for mailing companies to use PDF reading software that allows them to barcode multiple sheets of paper to be inserted into a single envelope on inserting equipment.  CID fonts with Identify H encoding present problems for this type of software.  Here is an enlightening discussion on the problem on Stackoverflow.com:

    Extracting Text from a PDF with CID fonts - Stack Overflow

    The most relevant quote being:

    If you have a CID font with Identity-H encoding you essentially cannot know what the glyphs represent without a ToUnicode. Sometimes it is possible to parse the underlying embedded font and check if a cmap is present there that can be used for the reverse mapping of glyph IDs into Unicode characters. If both are missing, you are out of luck and cannot find the mapping from the glyph ids into unicode characters (and hence the text meaning). – Ritsaert Hornstra Oct 30 '15 at 22:31

    Dov Isaacs
    Dov Isaacs
    Legend
    January 9, 2019

    To be very clear, vendor of PDF creation tools that produce PDF files using CID-encoded fonts without the mapping to Unicode characters are very much part of the problem here. Likewise, vendors of “PDF reading software that allows them to barcode multiple sheets of paper …” that either can't handle CID-encoded fonts at all, use the mapping tables, and/or properly diagnose problematic PDF content are part of the problem.

     

    Quite frankly, such mailing software that relies on scraping PDF files to get barcode information as opposed to working with metadata in the PDF file are also problematic.

     

    But again, CID fonts with Identity-H encoding part of the PDF standard and FWIW, the PDF/X-4 subset standard requires the to-Unicode tables. Based on what we know about the base ISO PDF standard, the subset standards, and software (both PDF creation and consumption) in the marketplace, our original response stands.

     

    - Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)
    T
    Test Screen NameCorrect answer
    Legend
    January 23, 2016

    Find another printer, they are trying to make you jump through hoops because their software doesn't work. CID fonts are normal everyday things, often used for all kinds of text.

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