Ubuntu – How to outline fonts in a PDF (or eps) file

fontsinkscapepdf

Say, I have a PDF graphic (such a plot made with matplotlib, Mathematica or similar), which contains vector art and text. The text uses non-standard or proprietary fonts (such Computer Modern if inline-TeX is used). The fonts are (usually) embedded and the PDF renders nicely in evince/acroread.

I'd like to edit/share the pdf without relying on those fonts, e.g. in Inkscape. Is there tool that will convert all text to paths?

Inkscape is not suitable here because it will replace the non-standard font with "Sans".
pdf2svg has issues with line art.

Best Answer

You can use Inkscape for this.

File -> Open -> open your PDF.

A dialog "PDF Import Settings" will pop up. If you tick the checkbox "Import via Poppler", the text will be converted to symbols on importing.

If needed, you can convert symbols further to paths and edit them (but as far as the specific question here goes, namely editing/sharing the pdf without relying on the fonts, symbols work fine).

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Fonts are not embedded into a pdf

This might not be the most relevant question for askubuntu, but I'll try to answer it nevertheless: You probably included graphics in your document that use the Helvetica font (a common example are the axis labels for figures created by Matlab), right? If you used Helvetica in your document (e.g. with \usepackage{helvet}), the Helvetica replacement Nimbus Sans L would be used instead.

Embedding the fonts from external figures is not possible at the moment (it should work if you make sure that the external figures embed the fonts themselves, though!).

Therefore, as suggested in the comments, the only solution seems to be to do a PDF->PS->PDF conversion, e.g.:

pdf2ps file.pdf file.ps
ps2pdf14 -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress -dEmbedAllFonts=true file.ps file.pdf

Unfortunately, hyperlinks for example will not survive this transformation.

See this question on the (more relevant) tex.stackexchange sister site: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/10391/how-to-embed-fonts-at-compile-time-with-pdflatex

Ubuntu – Create PDF from Inkscape SVG without destroying fonts and effects

You should upgrade your Inkscape to the PPA version Pre-0.49, my testing produced results using masking, clipping and a reference path difference:

example image showing clip mask and difference in inkscape as a pdf

To upgrade your inkscape, open up a terminal and issue the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:inkscape.dev/trunk
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install inkscape-trunk

This should remove the 0.48 version of inkscape and replace it with the pre-0.49 version you need for your pdf file.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Fonts are not embedded into a pdf

Ubuntu – Create PDF from Inkscape SVG without destroying fonts and effects

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