[okular] [Bug 506426] Avoid full font-embedding with commenting tools

[Klaus]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=506426

--- Comment #5 from Klaus <bauer.klaus.dieter at gmail.com> ---
________________________________________
WORKAROUND

It is currently possible to edit “okularpartrc” located e.g. in

    ~/.var/app/org.kde.okular/config/  # for flatpak
    ~/.config/okularpartrc    # for regular installations

to achieve the wanted behavior.

________________________________________
STEP BY STEP

1. In Okular, change the font for new typewritter and inline notes to anything
but the default. Also adjust the font size, as changing it later will require
editing the “okularpartrc” file again. E.g. “Monospace” for typewriter comments
and “Sans Serif” for inline note comments.

2. Open the “okularpartrc” file and replace the font names chosen above by one
of “Helvetica”, “Courier”. I didn't test whether you need “Times Roman” or
“Times” for a serif font.

Now inserting new comments uses standard PDF fonts.

________________________________________
LIMITATIONS

1. When you reopen or reload the file later and edit the text content of the
comment, that comment is switched to the default GUI font, i.e. this workaround
is largely sabotaged by an unrelated bug. On Windows 11, the default font is
"Segoe UI Emoji", which is HUGE (several MB). On my Linux system it is “Noto
Sans”, which still adds 300 KB by itself. Since the fonts are fully embedded
and not as subset fonts, you can quickly end up with very large PDFs when
commenting. To avoid this you have to avoid editing existing comments, and
instead have to rewrite them (augmented by cut+paste). Within the same session,
editing works without that issue.

2. Font embedding does not work consistently. Sometimes the font gets embedded
despite having a standard PDF font name, sometimes not. Might be related to
font substitution.

-- 
You are receiving this mail because:
You are the assignee for the bug.