Notes on getting Embedded Fonts for IEEE explore.

To get pdflatex to embed the 14 base fonts:

(and you are not using any images which are pdfs, need administrator access)

(1) edit this file on debian system or equivalent (run 'updmap' to see what config file it is using):
vi /etc/texmf/updmap.d/00updmap.cfg

or direct:
vi /var/lib/texmf/web2c/updmap.cfg

changing: false to true
#
# pdftexDownloadBase14
#
# Should pdftex download the base 14 pdf fonts? Since some configurations
# (ps / pdf tools / printers) use bad default fonts, it is safer to download
# the fonts. The pdf files will get bigger, though.
# Valid settings are true (download the fonts) or false (don't download
# the fonts).
#pdftexDownloadBase14 false
pdftexDownloadBase14 true

(2) run: to update the config files used by pdflatex
update-updmap

or direct:
updmap

(3) rerun pdflatex

Checking for embedded fonts:

Open your pdf in acroread and look under:
File / Document Properties / Fonts
press "List All Fonts"
under "Used Fonts" it should show the base ones as: "Embedded Subset"

*n.b. (This took me ages to work out) If you have fonts that have a space/blank/missing under "Used Fonts" page through your document then open the fonts dialog again.

I then had a problem that images I was using were also pdfs without embedded fonts.

If you have a pdf doc with embedded pdf images this hack works:

(also does some of the image resampling as dictated by IEEE explore.)

(1) convert to ps:
pdftops ICRA05.pdf

(2) convert back to pdf using prepress settings:
ps2pdf14 -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress ICRA05.ps

(3) check new ICRA05.pdf for horrendous formatting errors due to double conversion, and embedded fonts as above.

Luke F. 20/Jan/05