[R] pdf font embedding --- again

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Mon, 22 Aug 2005 ivo_welch-rstat8303 at mailblocks.com wrote:

>
> dear R wizards---  I would like to do some book-on-demand printing at a
> popular printer named lulu, but lulu requires inclusion even of the
> basic postscript fonts.  Interestingly, my book itself does not need
> the 14 base acrobat fonts, only the embedded R figures do.  Of course,
> I really would like to get pdftex to embed the fonts, but how to do
> this is not obvious either.  [This method seems to be what the R help
> page is indicating...  The software including the PostScript plot file
> should either embed the font outlines (usually from '.pfb' or '.pfa'
> files) or use DSC comments to instruct the print spooler to do so.)

Why not use the fonts your book does use in the figures?  (That's how
my books are done.)

> So, I would really, really like to embed the necessary fonts with the R
> figures.  I first reread the discussion in this mailing list about
> (eps) font embedding earlier this year.  This was ultimately not very
> helpful.  First, I do not  know how to instruct my embedding program to
> include the fonts that R figures want.  Second, I already start with
> the pdf device, so distilling eps files is not a good option--and it
> would seem a bit crazy to first use the wrong output device
> (postscript), then ship my files over to a windows machine somewhere
> that has distiller installed, run distiller by hand, then ftp them back
> to my linux machine---just for getting the fonts embedded.
>
> Is it impossible to get R to embed the necessary fonts in its pdf
> output?

Yes, as it has no access to them.  They are not Open Source.  You may be 
able to use URW clones, depending on their licensing conditions.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595