OS X PDF: Get Font Information

Question

Is there a simple way to get font information for a PDF file on Mac OSX? I should have thought that the Preview App would include this, but I can’t find it anywhere?

Failing that, is there another (cheap or free) application which will do this?

I definitely do not want to rely on something like Acrobat for this simple task.

Answer 1

Sure, use pdffonts as follows:

pdffonts ~/Desktop/GNU\ Parallel.pdf
name                                 type              encoding         emb sub uni object ID
------------------------------------ ----------------- ---------------- --- --- --- ---------
DMBULJ+Sentinel-Light                Type 1C           Custom           yes yes yes    266  0
DMBULJ+Sentinel-Semibold             Type 1C           WinAnsi          yes yes yes    268  0
DMBULJ+Sentinel-LightItalic          Type 1C           WinAnsi          yes yes yes    270  0
DMBULJ+Whitney-Light                 Type 1C           WinAnsi          yes yes yes    272  0
DMBULJ+OCRF-Light                    Type 1C           WinAnsi          yes yes yes    274  0
DMBULJ+Whitney-Medium                Type 1C           WinAnsi          yes yes yes    276  0
DMBULJ+Sentinel-BoldItalic           Type 1C           WinAnsi          yes yes yes     22  0

Or, another example:

pdffonts ~/Desktop/Applescript\ Commands\ Reference.pdf
name                                 type              encoding         emb sub uni object ID
------------------------------------ ----------------- ---------------- --- --- --- ---------
MNFADS+Courier                       TrueType          MacRoman         yes yes no      12  0
GCBDOX+.HelveticaNeueDeskInterface-Regular TrueType          MacRoman         yes yes no       8  0
BVTFLM+LucidaGrande                  TrueType          MacRoman         yes yes no      10  0
JBWSLS+LucidaGrande-Bold             TrueType          MacRoman         yes yes no      11  0
XGRGCO+LucidaGrande                  TrueType          WinAnsi          yes yes yes     60  0
LEFUMS+Courier-Bold                  TrueType          MacRoman         yes yes no      86  0

pdffonts is part of the poppler package which is easiest to install via homebrew. Basically, you go to the homebrew website and copy and paste the one-line installation script. At that point, you will have a proper package manager for OS X.

Then you can install pdffonts using:

brew install poppler

If you get any problems, call the good doctor with

brew doctor