Coolspools fonts looks different in the PDF to what it does when printed.

CoolSpools has a rich set of options that are intended to make sure that you can get fonts in your PDF to look the way you want them. If things don’t look right first time, here are some tips.

Mapping fonts to PDF built-in fonts

By default, and with a few unusual exceptions, CoolSpools will try to map fonts that are defined in your spooled file to a suitable font from the list of PDF built-in fonts.

PDF built-in fonts are fonts that Adobe guarantee will be available when you view a PDF in Adobe Reader. This means that they can be referred to simply by name and take up no space inside the PDF.

The PDF built-in fonts are:

  • Courier
  • Helvetica
  • Times

CoolSpools will substitute Courier for monospaced fonts in the spooled file, Times for serif fonts and Helvetica for sans-serif fonts.

This method is used when the default FONT(*MAP) is specified. It has the advantage of minimizing conversion time and the size of the resultant PDF file. It also normally gives excellent on-screen appearance. However, it also has the disadvantage that the fonts may look different to those used in the spooled file.

Embedding fonts in PDF

If you’re not happy with the appearance of the fonts in your PDF when you use the default FONT(*MAP) option, you should try FONT(*EMBED) instead. FONT(*EMBED) tells CoolSpools to locate the IBM font resources used by the spooled file (e.g. coded fonts and font character sets), extract the font specifications from them and embed those fonts inside the PDF files as they are created.

This method has the advantage that, if embedding was successful and the correct font resource object was located, the appearance of the font in the PDF will exactly match that of the printed document. Conversely, it has the disadvantage that it will take longer to build the PDF (because of the work involved in analyzing the font resources) and the resultant PDFs will be larger (because they will include a copy of the font, albeit compressed).

Overriding fonts

If you’re still not happy with the results you obtain, there are further options to assist you.

The CVTFONTID (Convert Font ID) and CVTFNTRSC (Convert Font Resource) parameters let you specify the fonts that you wish to use in the PDF to replace fonts referenced in the original spooled file:

  • CVTFONTID is used to nominate a substitute font for fonts identified in the spooled file by font number (e.g. DDS FONT keyword or CRTPRTF FONT parameter).
  • CVTFNTRSC is used to nominate a substitute font for fonts identified in the spooled file by font resource name (e.g. DDS FNTCHRSET or CDEFNT keyword or CRTPRTF FNTCHRSET or CDEFNT parameter).

The font you nominate as the replacement font can be any of the following:

  • A PDF builtin font such as Courier, Times or Helvetica
  • A system i font resource object, specified using IFS naming e.g. 
    /QSYS.LIB/RESOURCES.LIB/CZ6200.FNTRSC
  • An Adobe Type 1 or TrueType font file in the IFS e.g. 
    /QIBM/ProdData/OS400/Fonts/PSFonts/Latin/COU.PFB
    /fonts/consola.ttf

If you need help with any of the techniques described above, feel free to contact our support team

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