Re: Repeated embedded fonts in PDF documentation

[Werner LEMBERG]

> When I look at the metadata for the PDF versions of the
> documentation, it shows hundreds and hundreds of embedded fonts. Or
> more correctly, it shows subsets of the same fonts embedded, in some
> cases, hundreds of times over.

LilyPond creates many, many small PDF files which are eventually
incorporated into the manual created by pdfTeX.  To be more precise,
LilyPond itself doesn't do any font subsetting but delegates this
process to GhostScript which does the PS->PDF conversion.

> If I open the one of the manuals in Acrobat (full version) and
> select the Reduce File Size option from the Document menu, which
> consolidates fonts, then when that eventually finishes - depending
> on file size, it can take many hours to complete - I find that the
> size of the PDF file has been reduced by 40-50%.

Another possibility is `pdfsizeopt', which does an even better job, I
believe, since it specialized for handling TeX files.

  http://code.google.com/p/pdfsizeopt/

Unfortunately, due to copyright reasons, it is impossible to
incorporate it into lilypond's workflow of creating the manuals.
However, maybe someone can set up a postprocessing stage so that the
online versions of the PDF manuals get reduced in size which would be
beneficial for both the user and the hoster, reducing the bandwidth.

> Without knowing what mechanism is used for producing the PDF docs, I
> wonder if *not* subsetting fonts would produce smaller documentation
> files, as there would then be no need to include hundreds of
> different subsets of the same font.

I don't think so.  AFAIK, pdfTeX simply takes the PDFs and
incorporates them into the final document unchanged.


    Werner