These are not specific "font families" like Arial or Times New Roman. Instead, they are internal aliases:
CID (Character Identifier): A method for encoding large character sets, often used in Unicode or Asian language fonts.
F1, F2, F3...: Arbitrary labels assigned by the PDF generator. For example, in some documents, CIDFont+F1 may actually be Arial Bold and CIDFont+F2 might be Arial Regular. Common Issues and Solutions
When you see these names, it usually indicates a missing font error, which can cause text to appear as dots, strange symbols, or not appear at all. 1. How to Identify the Actual Font If you need to know what font is supposed to be there:
Adobe Acrobat: Go to File > Properties (or press Ctrl+D) and click the Fonts tab.
Third-Party Tools: Some editors like Smallpdf allow you to click text blocks to see which font is missing. 2. How to Fix Missing Font Errors If a document won't display correctly, try these steps: Cidfont F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 Full -
Cidfont F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 Full -. The CidFont F series has been widely adopted as a de facto standard for CJK font rendering. 3.64.214.130 Embed a font issue in PDF Adobe Acrobat
Part 4: The Critical Role of “Full” in “CIDFont F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 Full”
The keyword "full" changes the meaning significantly.
- Without "full" (Subset): The PDF only contains the characters actually used in the document. Characters like
@#% or rarely used glyphs are missing. If you edit the PDF and type a new letter, it may vanish or render as a box.
- With "full" (Complete Embedding): The PDF contains the entire character set of that CIDFont. Even if you only used the letter "A", the font file inside the PDF includes "B", "C", "Я", "™", etc.
Part 6: Technical Deep Dive – Inside a PDF with F1–F6
Let’s look at a snippet of a PDF object dictionary that contains the full F1–F6 sequence.
15 0 obj
<<
/Type /Font
/Subtype /CIDFontType2
/BaseFont /CIDFont+F1
/CIDSystemInfo <<
/Registry (Adobe)
/Ordering (Identity)
/Supplement 0
>>
/FontDescriptor 16 0 R
/DW 1000
/W [0 [500] 31 [600] 40 [700]]
>>
endobj
... (repeated for F2 through F6 with different /FontDescriptor references)
Notice:
/CIDFontType2 indicates an OpenType/TrueType based CIDFont./Identity CMap means the original character order is preserved.- Each
F1 through F6 has its own /FontDescriptor object (pointing to different subsets or full encodings).
2. The "F" Designators: What are F1 through F6?
When viewing a raw PDF file or a PostScript log, you will often see resources named F1, F2, F3, F4, F5, F6, and so on. There is a common misconception that these refer to specific "system fonts." They do not.
Method 3: Using Ghostscript (to list without opening)
gs -q -dNODISPLAY -c "(yourfile.pdf) runpdfbegin /pdfshowfont where pop pdfshowfont quit ifelse"
Look for entries like <</BaseFont /CIDFont+F1>>.
Option B: Using Ghostscript (Open Source)
gs -dSAFER -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite \
-dEmbedAllFonts=true -dSubsetFonts=false \
-sOutputFile=output_fullfonts.pdf \
-f input_with_F1_F6.pdf
-dSubsetFonts=false is the magic flag that forces full CIDFont embedding.
Cidfont F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 __top__ Full
These are not specific "font families" like Arial or Times New Roman. Instead, they are internal aliases:
CID (Character Identifier): A method for encoding large character sets, often used in Unicode or Asian language fonts.
F1, F2, F3...: Arbitrary labels assigned by the PDF generator. For example, in some documents, CIDFont+F1 may actually be Arial Bold and CIDFont+F2 might be Arial Regular. Common Issues and Solutions
When you see these names, it usually indicates a missing font error, which can cause text to appear as dots, strange symbols, or not appear at all. 1. How to Identify the Actual Font If you need to know what font is supposed to be there: cidfont f1 f2 f3 f4 f5 f6 full
Adobe Acrobat: Go to File > Properties (or press Ctrl+D) and click the Fonts tab.
Third-Party Tools: Some editors like Smallpdf allow you to click text blocks to see which font is missing. 2. How to Fix Missing Font Errors If a document won't display correctly, try these steps: Cidfont F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 Full -
Cidfont F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 Full -. The CidFont F series has been widely adopted as a de facto standard for CJK font rendering. 3.64.214.130 Embed a font issue in PDF Adobe Acrobat These are not specific "font families" like Arial
Part 4: The Critical Role of “Full” in “CIDFont F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 Full”
The keyword "full" changes the meaning significantly.
- Without "full" (Subset): The PDF only contains the characters actually used in the document. Characters like
@#% or rarely used glyphs are missing. If you edit the PDF and type a new letter, it may vanish or render as a box.
- With "full" (Complete Embedding): The PDF contains the entire character set of that CIDFont. Even if you only used the letter "A", the font file inside the PDF includes "B", "C", "Я", "™", etc.
Part 6: Technical Deep Dive – Inside a PDF with F1–F6
Let’s look at a snippet of a PDF object dictionary that contains the full F1–F6 sequence.
15 0 obj
<<
/Type /Font
/Subtype /CIDFontType2
/BaseFont /CIDFont+F1
/CIDSystemInfo <<
/Registry (Adobe)
/Ordering (Identity)
/Supplement 0
>>
/FontDescriptor 16 0 R
/DW 1000
/W [0 [500] 31 [600] 40 [700]]
>>
endobj
... (repeated for F2 through F6 with different /FontDescriptor references)
Part 4: The Critical Role of “Full” in
Notice:
/CIDFontType2 indicates an OpenType/TrueType based CIDFont./Identity CMap means the original character order is preserved.- Each
F1 through F6 has its own /FontDescriptor object (pointing to different subsets or full encodings).
2. The "F" Designators: What are F1 through F6?
When viewing a raw PDF file or a PostScript log, you will often see resources named F1, F2, F3, F4, F5, F6, and so on. There is a common misconception that these refer to specific "system fonts." They do not.
Method 3: Using Ghostscript (to list without opening)
gs -q -dNODISPLAY -c "(yourfile.pdf) runpdfbegin /pdfshowfont where pop pdfshowfont quit ifelse"
Look for entries like <</BaseFont /CIDFont+F1>>.
Option B: Using Ghostscript (Open Source)
gs -dSAFER -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite \
-dEmbedAllFonts=true -dSubsetFonts=false \
-sOutputFile=output_fullfonts.pdf \
-f input_with_F1_F6.pdf
-dSubsetFonts=false is the magic flag that forces full CIDFont embedding.