APDFL Font Q&A

What Fonts Does APDFL Include?

The Adobe PDF Library package contains a basic set of fonts matching fonts that you would get with Adobe Acrobat; these include Courier, Symbol and the Adobe serif and sans-serif multi-master fonts,  plus a set of CJKV fonts. These can be found in the /Resources/Fonts folder of the package you download from our download portal. The font set can be included/distributed on any machines where you are deploying APDFL.

How Are Fonts Loaded Into APDFL?

APDFL works the same way as Acrobat, searching in the system font folder (which is different between Windows and Linux) as well as the Resources folder specified during the APDFL initialization.  You can also specify additional folders on the APDFL initialization call.  For performance and other reasons, APDFL searches for font and other resources only during the initialization; it stores up a list of the font resources it locates during the initialization so that it does not have to look again each time a font resource is called for.

How Do I Use These Fonts On Linux?

Many Linux variants (AWS runs on Linux) do not have some of the common, popular fonts found on many Windows systems by default.  There are font packs that you can install on Linux if they are not already in place.

Does APDFL Support Google Fonts?

Although this font format is being considered by the PDF specification committee, at the time of writing this article, it is not yet supported by the PDF specification, so it cannot be supported by APDFL.  Static versions of the fonts (normal TTFs) are supported of course.

Does APDFL Support Adobe Type 1 Fonts?

Adobe has deprecated their usage of Type 1 Fonts. Adobe desktop application font menus will no longer list them or allow editing using them. APDFL will still be able to process (render, print, etc.) any PDF documents that contain Adobe Type 1 fonts.