Accessibility

Acrobat Developer Center

Working with Acrobat Distiller, fonts, and more

The Adobe® Acrobat® Distiller® application converts PostScript language page descriptions into Portable Document Format (PDF) files. The Acrobat Distiller control interface, present in version7 of Acrobat Distiller for the Macintosh and Microsoft Windows platforms allows other applications to programmatically control the Distiller program.

Fonts are an important consideration whether you are an application developer writing applications capable of embedding fonts or accessing embedded fonts within a file or using Distiller with font technology.

The documents below describe the guidelines that are followed whenever Adobe software considers whether to embed fonts in files, whether through initial creation or transformation of existing files. There are also documents describing the Acrobat Distiller control interface, Distiller considerations for finding, embedding, and subsetting fonts, font metrics by platform and CMaps by language, and advanced user features in Acrobat.

Font Embedding Guidelines for Adobe Third-party Developers (PDF, 262K)


This document provides guidelines for Adobe® third-party application developers who are writing applications capable of embedding fonts in a file or accessing embedded fonts within a file.

Distiller Font Management (PDF, 278k)


Specifies the types of fonts Adobe Acrobat Distiller® 4.05 supports and describes Distiller considerations for finding, embedding, and subsetting those fonts. It also explains how Distiller indirectly supports TrueType fonts. This document is intended for more experienced Distiller users who are also familiar with font technology.

ToUnicode Mapping File Tutorial (PDF, 576K)


Describes how to construct a “ToUnicode” mapping file for CID-keyed fonts. ToUnicode tables enable text search and other lexical operations for fonts with non-standard encodings.

Acrobat Widths-Only CIDFont Font Tutorial (PDF, 137K)


Explains how to create Widths-Only CID-keyed fonts for use with Distiller. Used for fonts that cannot be embedded in PDF files, so that metrics will be correct.

Batch sequences (PDF, 282k)


This document discusses the basic concepts and techniques of using the “Execute JavaScript” command of the Batch Processing feature of Acrobat 5.0 or later, and offers sample solutions to some of the common problems users encounter.

Sample sequences used in the Batch Sequences document (Windows®, ZIP, 17K)


PDF Open Parameters (PDF, 154K)


This document describes PDF Open parameters for Acrobat 7.0. These allow you to open a PDF file using a URL or command that specifies both the file to be opened plus actions to be performed once the file is opened.

Font metrics for PDF Core 14 fonts

CMaps for PDF 1.4 CJK fonts

Accessibility API Reference (PDF, 749K)


Describes how developers can use Acrobat and COM objects, the MSAA interface, or the UNIX Accessibility Toolkit to write applications like screen readers to provide better access to PDF files.

ClientFiles.zip (ZIP, 146K)


Files that can be used by Windows clients of the accessibility interfaces described in the document.