PDF guidelines

Size of the PDF

  • Check the filesize of the final PDF - many Kivra users may be looking at contents on their cellphones with restricted bandwidth or even while traveling abroad. Eliminate unnecessary images and try different compression settings when outputting.
  • Be careful about embedding images: PDF encoding will recompress jpegs, which may introduce artifacts and make the images look less sharp, but embedding other image formats may increase the final size of the document.
  • Be careful about image dimensions: images with pixel density suitable for printing (i.e.: 150-300ppi) will be overkill for most onscreen viewing.
  • Always be sure to use RGB for color-encoding over CMYK (smaller file size and better for on-screen viewing).
  • When embedding logos or other graphics that need to be sharp at any resolution, use a vector format for the image (preferably SVG - supported by Acrobat > v.5). The graphics will look better and in general the image file size will be smaller.

Embedded fonts

  • Embed your fonts and then try to check with Acrobat Reader that the fonts are correctly embedded by going into AcrobatReader> File> Properties...> Fonts. This will show which fonts are included in the document, whether they're embedded, and how they are encoded.
  • Subset the characters in your fonts (that is, embed only the characters used by the document) if using more than just a couple of typefaces, but be careful about doing this! If only 10-20k are saved then it may be better to simply embed the entire font in case some characters are missed.
  • If possible try to avoid fonts that might be rendered by a system default replacement: for instance, embedding a version of Calibri that differs slightly from the one included on the end-user's computer means that sometimes the font will be rendered with the computer's characters but using the font metrics specified in the PDF, randomly disrupting the appearance of the text. Many printers also have a small subset of fonts (such as Calibri or Arial) which may also cause conflicts if these default system fonts are embedded in the PDF.
  • ALWAYS avoid encoding fonts using CIDFontType0 - this encoding table was developed to handle languages with VERY large character sets (Asian languages with 10,000+ characters). Using this enco- ding for European languages will definitely cause problems on a wide variety of operating systems, browsers and printers.
  • Try to embed the fonts as Postscript/Type1, Truetype or OpenType encoding - these formats support Latin languages and have fewer compatibility problems than CID font encoding.
  • Output to the latest possible version PDF - v1.4 and upwards have included a lot of improvements in font rendering.