[bug-pcl] reducing the size Ghostpcl generated PDFs

[Henry Stiles]

Jonathan Hurley writes:
 > 
 > I have comparing the size of the PDFs generated by ghostpcl, with that
 > produced by a commercial pcl2pdf converter written by Visual software.
 > Ghostpcl is producing substantially larger PDFs. In one example the pdf
 > produced by Ghostpcl is 4.9 megabytes in size, while Visual's tool
 > produced a pdf of 27523 bytes. I understand that the difference is because
 > Ghostpcl is embedding fonts, whereas Visual is not.
 > 
 > I understand that embedding fonts means that the pdf will look the same on
 > all platforms, but sometimes it may be nicer to get a smaller file size
 > at the cost of some slight variations in fonts.
 > 
 > I am wondering whether it is possible at all to control which fonts are
 > embedded in the pdf documents, perhaps using the base 14 fonts as
 > substitues.  Alternatively if anyone is aware of open source software (for
 > Linux/Unix) that can help with this kind of thing, then I would be
 > interested.
 > 
 > Thanks for any help
 > 
 > Jon
 > 

Hi Jon

The business of using substitutes is difficult because we use TrueType
fonts in our pcl interpreter.  It is possible to do but we aren't
looking at it unless we get a push from commercial users to do so.  

Can you post your pcl file?  The size discrepancy looks a little large
to just be the font issue.  Thanks.

-- 
./Henry
Artifex Software