Many CIDFont issues stem from missing CJK (Asian language) support. Adobe offers a free "Font Pack" that adds the necessary resources to handle CID-keyed fonts. Installing this often resolves the "Normal Fixed" error immediately. 3. Refill the PDF (The "Print to PDF" Trick)
A generic label (Font #1) assigned by the PDF creator when the original font name cannot be fully embedded or recognized.
: If you are using libraries like TCPDF or Dompdf, avoid relying on default or blank font declarations. Explicitly load and call universally supported web fonts like Helvetica , Arial , or Courier .
font_dict = '/Type': '/Font', '/Subtype': '/CIDFontType2', '/BaseFont': '/NotoSansCJKjp-Regular', '/CIDSystemInfo': '/Registry': '(Adobe)', '/Ordering': '(Japan1)', '/Supplement': 6 , '/DW': 1000, '/W': [] # explicit widths cidfont f1 normal fixed
Save the new file under a alternative name and open it in your preferred viewer. Method 2: Force Font Substitution
: Opening the file in a viewer (like macOS Preview) and "exporting as PDF" can sometimes flatten the font issues and make the file usable.
When using tools like Ghostscript to convert PDF to PostScript, the tool might fail to interpret the original font data, resorting to a standard CID font mapping. Many CIDFont issues stem from missing CJK (Asian
: Ensure your PDF generation script has font embedding turned on ( $pdf->SetFont('courier', '', 10); or your language's equivalent). Do not rely on "Core standard fonts" being present on the client device.
/CIDFont /F1 findfont 20 scalefont setfont (Hello 世界) show /F1 10 Tf (Column 1) Tj 10 0 Td (Column 2) Tj
: CIDFont stands for Character Identifier Font. It is an extension of PostScript (Type 1) or TrueType (Type 2) technologies designed to support more than 256 characters—handling up to 65,535 separate glyphs. Naming Convention : Labels like Explicitly load and call universally supported web fonts
F1 is not a specific font name like "Arial" or "Times New Roman". Instead, it is a inside a PDF dictionary. In PDF syntax, you'll often see it like this:
A user-friendly solution if you have a Mac is to open the problematic PDF in the application and then export it again as a new PDF. This process often re-encodes the document and embeds the missing font information.