Export to PDF on OS X, font missing on Windows

Question

Here is another problem with Mathematica plots and PDF. I have Mathematica 9.0.1 on Mac OS X. I want to export my plots to PDF to include them in a LaTeX document.

If I export the plot with the command Export["test.pdf",plot] I get inconsistent results. The PDF exported from OSX looks good in Preview, but the font is missing if I open it on Adobe Acrobat on Windows, and it is replaced by Adobe Serif MM. Here is pdffonts output:

name                                 type              emb sub uni object ID
------------------------------------ ----------------- --- --- --- ---------
Mathematica1                         Type 1            yes no  no       8  0
Times                                TrueType          no  no  no      11  0

Finally, if I open the file exported in OSX with Preview and save it again, it looks good on both platforms. Here is the pdffonts output of the new file:

name                                 type              emb sub uni object ID
------------------------------------ ----------------- --- --- --- ---------
AQZZRA+Mathematica1                  Type 1            yes yes yes     10  0
HPLGMT+Times-Roman                   TrueType          yes yes no       8  0

Is there a way I can get Mathematica to produce the same output as Preview? If not, is there a command line tool that can re-save the PDF file so that the fonts are embedded correctly?

Answer 1

You can use, i.e. specify FontFamily for your choice of font, if the font is installed on your system the font will be embedded:

?? FontFamily

FontFamily is an option for Style and Cell that specifies the font family in which text should be rendered.  >>

Attributes[FontFamily]={Protected}

.

SetDirectory@NotebookDirectory[];

.

plot = Plot[
  {Sin[x], Cos[x]}
  , {x, -\[Pi], \[Pi]}
  , FrameLabel -> {{y, Sin[x]}, {x, "plot"}}
  , LabelStyle -> {FontFamily -> "Times", 14, GrayLevel[0]}
  , PlotTheme -> "Detailed"
  , FrameTicks -> {Range[-\[Pi], \[Pi], \[Pi]/2], Automatic}
  ]

Export["test.pdf", plot]

Edit

As @Verbeia justly remarks, I should answer the question in full, with V9 one can use

plot = Plot[{Sin[x], Cos[x]}
  , {x, -\[Pi], \[Pi]}
  , Frame -> True
  , FrameLabel -> {{y, Sin[x]}, {x, "This is a Plot"}}
  , LabelStyle -> {FontFamily -> "Times", 14, GrayLevel[0]}
  , FrameTicks -> {Range[-\[Pi], \[Pi], \[Pi]/2], Automatic}]

The most standard fonts are correctly embedded. One advantage is to use fonts that have a matured character level of mathematic characters.