A minimal PDF
The smallest complete file: a page, and shapes drawn on it.
Fonts kept inside the file
Text set in a font the file carries inside it, cut down to the letters actually used.
The text is set in a font the file carries inside it, so the page looks the same on a computer that has never had that font installed. Only the letters actually written are carried: a page of a dozen words holds a dozen letter shapes, not the whole alphabet.
Cutting the font down to size is the easy half. The hard half is that the words have to come back out again: the file carries a table tying every shape it drew to the letter that shape stands for, and the engine's checks pull the text back out of the finished PDF to prove it. Without that table the page looks perfect and nothing in it can be searched or copied.
What this example shows
- A TrueType font embedded and subset to the glyphs drawn.
- A character map that keeps the text searchable and copyable.
- Any font file named on the command line, not one fixed choice.
The code, in full
The same document is written twice, once in each language. Both files are shown in full, with the code coloured on the server, and can be copied in one click.
The document itself
The same document is written in each of these languages. Open the one you want to look at.
What this document weighs
| Before | 111,279 bytes |
|---|---|
| Now | 41,000 bytes |
| Saved | 63.2 % |
Not one mark on the page changed. See every document measured.
Examples near this one
A boarding pass
A boarding pass carrying the IATA BCBP string a gate scanner reads.
A sheet of shelf labels
A sheet of die-cut shelf labels, priced and barcoded, with cut marks in the margins.
Breaking a paragraph up, and aligning it
A paragraph broken into lines, set four ways: left, right, centred, justified.
Breaking an overlong word
A word too wide for its column: left whole, or cut to the edge.
Soft hyphens and no-break spaces
A justified column set twice: the long words breaking at their soft hyphens with a hyphen shown, or left whole, and a figure a no-break space keeps together.
Glossary
- subset
- Putting into the file only the letters the document actually draws, instead of the whole typeface. A typeface holds thousands of shapes; a letter or an invoice uses a few dozen. Carrying only those is what makes the files here small.
- glyph
- One drawn shape of a typeface. The letter A is a character; the particular drawing of it that lands on the page is a glyph.