PDFlib 8 Windows COM/.NET Tutorial

Latin core fonts. PDF viewers support a core set of 14 fonts which are assumed to be always
available. Full metrics information for the core fonts is already built into PDFlib so
that no additional data are required (unless the font is to be embedded). The core fonts
have the following names:
Courier, Courier-Bold, Courier-Oblique, Courier-BoldOblique,
Helvetica, Helvetica-Bold, Helvetica-Oblique, Helvetica-BoldOblique,
Times-Roman, Times-Bold, Times-Italic, Times-BoldItalic,
Symbol, ZapfDingbats
If a font name is not connected to any file name via resources, PDFlib will search the
font in the list of Latin core fonts. This step will be skipped if the embedding option is
specified or a FontOutline resource is available for the font name. The following code
fragment requests one of the core fonts without any configuration:
font = p.load_font("Times-Roman", "unicode", "");
Core fonts found in the internal list are never embedded. In order to embed one of these
fonts you must configure a font outline file.
Host fonts. If a font name is not connected to any file name via resources, PDFlib will
search the font in the list of fonts installed on the Windows or Mac system. Fonts installed
on the system are called host fonts. Host font names must be encoded in ASCII.
On Windows Unicode can also be used. See Section 5.4.5, »Host Fonts on Windows and
Mac OS X«, page 137, for more details on host fonts. Example:
font = p.load_font("Verdana", "unicode", "");
On Windows an optional font style can be added to the font name after a comma:
font = p.load_font("Verdana,Bold", "unicode", "");
In order to load a host font with the name of one of the core fonts, the font name must
be connected to the desired host font name via the HostFont resource category. The following
fragment makes sure that instead of using the built-in core font data, the Symbol
font metrics and outline data will be taken from the host system:
p.set_parameter("HostFont", "Symbol=Symbol");
font = p.load_font("Symbol", "unicode", "embedding");
The alias font name to the left of the equal sign can be chosen arbitrarily; we simply
used the name of the host font.
Extension-based search for font files. All font types except Type 3 fonts can be
searched by using the specified font name as the base name (without any file suffix) of a
font metrics or outline file. If PDFlib couldn’t find any font with the specified name it
will loop over all entries in the SearchPath resource category, and add all known file
name suffixes to the supplied font name in an attempt to locate the font metrics or outline
data. The details of the extension-based search algorithm are as follows:
> The following suffixes will be added to the font name, and the resulting file names
tried one after the other to locate the font metrics (and outline in the case of True-
Type and OpenType fonts):
134 Chapter 5: Font Handling (Edition for COM, .NET, and REALbasic)