[poppler] pdftohtml : enhancing it to use embedded fonts

[mpsuzuki at hiroshima-u.ac.jp]

Hi,

Although I don't have sufficient time to work this feature,
I remember there was similar request before a few months,
so I appreciate if you will work (or you can find any
volunteer to work) with it.

On Sun, 5 Jun 2011 15:41:53 -0700
Josh Richardson <jric at chegg.com> wrote:
>This should give us an exact representation of the original font in the
>PDF, though it will only work with modern browsers, since earlier
>browsers don't support "@font-face".  For IE, I'll have to convert the
>font to EOT, and for the others I'll probably use regular OpenType (not
>TrueType) format.

Excuse me, why "regular OpenType (not TrueType)"?

--

I propose to consider WOFF as the first milestone instead
of EOF, although I think that still the most people is
using HTML browsers without WOFF support. The reasons are:

* The W3C standardization of EOT is almost stopped since 2008,
  but WOFF is being in the process to be a W3C recommendation.

* WOFF would be cross platform solution for newer HTML
  browsers; IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari etc. But EOT
  would not be cross platform solutions.

* The patent issue of EOT is not clarified yet. EOT uses the
  patent to compress the font, owned by Agfa (not Microsoft!),
  and there is no explicit permission to use without royalty.
  It seems that the participants from Agfa was willing to
  permit(*), but the EOT standardization process is stopped
  now, so no explicit permission is not documented yet.

  (*) See http://www.w3.org/Fonts/Misc/minutes-2008-10 and
  find the comment by Vladimir saying that Agfa's patents
  were contributed on an royalty free basis.

  I heard that there are some GPLv2 softwares dealing with EOT,
  but I'm not sure if they are implementing the free part of
  EOT spec or they think EOT is already royalty free technology.

>Does anyone see an issue with the approach, or have any advice?  For
>instance, I'm not sure how much luck I'll have with converting
>especially Type 3 fonts to OpenType/EOT.

Either I don't have good idea about Type3 fonts. The Type 3
font in PDF is described by PDF instructions, so something like
PDF renderer having PS Type1 (or TrueType outline instructions)
as its output device. Fontforge can convert SVG graphics to
Type1 or TrueType fonts, but linking fontforge with poppler is
overkill. Making some SVG pictures and a script to convert them
to a font by external fontforge could be the first step...

Regards,
mpsuzuki