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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-20T03:21:08+00:00

I’m trying to get ghostscript to render a pdf file from a Windows box.

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I’m trying to get ghostscript to render a pdf file from a Windows box. The pdf file uses the ComicSansMS font. I’ve copied the comic.ttf file from my Windows7 box into my /usr/share/ghostscript/fonts directory, and I’ve created a Fontmap file in that same directory containing this line:

/ComicSansMS (comic.ttf) ;

As nearly as I can tell, the font is not being found despite this. The text comes out very poorly, and some of the smaller font sizes are rendered half the size they should be. Access times and strace show that the Fontmap file is being read, but the font file (comic.ttf) is not being accessed at all. There are no error messages:

hope 78$ gs cards-01.pdf
GPL Ghostscript  9.00 (2010-09-14)
Copyright (C) 2010 Artifex Software, Inc.  All rights reserved.
This software comes with NO WARRANTY: see the file PUBLIC for details.
Processing pages 1 through 1.
Page 1
>>showpage, press <return> to continue<<

If I use -dFAPIDEBUG on the gs command line, I see the following:

hope 74$ gs -dFAPIDEBUG -I/usr/share/ghostscript/fonts cards-01.pdf
GPL Ghostscript  9.00 (2010-09-14)
Copyright (C) 2010 Artifex Software, Inc.  All rights reserved.
This software comes with NO WARRANTY: see the file PUBLIC for details.
Processing pages 1 through 1.
Page 1
FAPIhook --nostringval--
Trying to render the font Font --nostringval-- ( aliased from ComicSansMS ) with FAPI...
Font --nostringval-- ( aliased from ComicSansMS ) is being rendered with FAPI=FreeType
FAPIhook --nostringval--
Font --nostringval-- ( aliased from ComicSansMS ) is mapped to FAPI=FreeType
FAPIhook RVJCAL+SymbolMT
Trying to render the font Font RVJCAL+SymbolMT with FAPI...
Font RVJCAL+SymbolMT is being rendered with FAPI=FreeType
FAPIhook RVJCAL+SymbolMT
Font RVJCAL+SymbolMT is mapped to FAPI=FreeType
FAPIhook HYLUQF+ComicSansMS
Trying to render the font Font HYLUQF+ComicSansMS with FAPI...
Font HYLUQF+ComicSansMS is being rendered with FAPI=FreeType
FAPIhook HYLUQF+ComicSansMS
Font HYLUQF+ComicSansMS is mapped to FAPI=FreeType
>>showpage, press <return> to continue<<

Naturally, the line from the above that most concerns me is this one:

Font --nostringval-- ( aliased from ComicSansMS ) is being rendered with FAPI=FreeType

“gs -h” shows that the font directory is, indeed, in the search path:

hope 77$ gs -h
GPL Ghostscript  9.00 (2010-09-14)
    [ ... ]
Search path:
   /usr/share/ghostscript/9.00/Resource/Init :
   /usr/share/ghostscript/9.00/lib :
   /usr/share/ghostscript/9.00/Resource/Font :
   /usr/share/ghostscript/fonts : /usr/share/fonts/Type1 : /usr/share/fonts

I’ve tried several permutations of formatting in the Fontmap file, including:

(Comic Sans MS) (comic.ttf) ;
(ComicSansMS) (comic.ttf) ;
/Comic Sans MS (comic.ttf) ;
/ComicSansMS /comic.ttf ;

I’m fairly sure my original one is the correct one, but I was getting desperate. 😛

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I came back to this problem after a delay. Upon further investigation with a magnifying glass, the problem is different from what I initially thought.

    Text is definitely being rendered incorrectly in parts of the document. Each letter is far too small, though the spacing is oddly correct. However, the individual letters are the correct shape for the font.

    The font on disk is not being accessed, but that’s because the fonts are all embedded within the document. This fact would probably have been obvious to a Ghostscript expert from the output I posted in the original question (I’m guessing the “HYLUQF+” prefix is the smoking gun there), but I don’t work with Ghostscript much. My fonts were installed correctly, and other documents were able to access them without trouble.

    Of course, this still leaves the question of why my embedded fonts are being rendered incorrectly, but I will investigate that separately and/or post a different question. I maintain that the PDF file is uncorrupted (I have several other PDFs which exhibit the same problem), but I still don’t know what’s wrong.

    @pipitas: Thanks very much for trying. You certainly did help verify that my installed fonts are not the problem. Actually, now that I look again, you even gently suggested the font might be embedded, but I either didn’t see it, didn’t believe it, or didn’t know how to check.

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