[Sending this to the list, because it may be of general interest.]
> How do I tell which fonts I am getting?
You could try opening the file with gs, i.e., simply doing
gs filename
on the command line. My ghostscript gives me messages like
Loading Helvetica font from [...]/fonts/Type1/Helvetica.pfa...
if the font is *not* embedded in the document (and remains
silent if the font is read as part of the file). If the font
is embedded, you could just look at the Postscript code and
search for "FontName". Or you could convert to PDF using
ps2pdf and then use pdffonts to list the fonts, or check the
"Fonts" tab of the "Properties" dialog in acroread.
grops only embeds fonts listed in <groff_font_dir>/devps/download.
> I think I'm just taking the defaults.
> I generally limit myself to:
> R
> I
> B
> HR
> HI
> HB
> HBI
These belong to the "base 13" set of fonts (Times, Helvetica,
Courier (each in 4 variants) and Symbol) which every Postscript
printer is expected to have built in. They (or equivalent fonts)
are also expected to be provided by every PDF reader, but Adobe
now recommends embedding (subsetting) every font, even these.
If you convert to PDF using ps2pdf or Distiller, it probably
depends on the setting of EmbedAllFonts, NeverEmbed, etc. in
these programs whether a font is embedded or not, so you might
end up with one of three possibilities:
1. Font is embedded by grops and transferred to the .pdf.
2. Font is not embedded by grops but embedded in the .pdf
by gs/Distiller.
3. Font is embedded neither by grops nor gs/Distiller,
and the PDF reader uses its own.
So if you want to make sure a particular font is used, get
a Type 1 copy of it and list it in grops's download file.
Adobe's base 13 fonts used to be available with some X11
distributions (particularly those which also provided Display
PostScript), and with earlier versions of Acrobat Reader.
(For some obscure reason, Adobe Reader later provided Arial
instead of Helvetica.)
Alternatively, use the URW fonts provided with ghostscript.
