title: Rules for Font Substitutions to / from PDF when using SSRS / ReportViewer to create PDFs?
body: <p>In an effort to <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15310/optimizing-the-pdf-export-of-huge-reports-in-sql-reporting-services-2005/10481764#10481764">reduce the size of the PDF</a> files exported from SSRS and the ReportViewer control, one of the main contributors to the size of a PDF is full and subset font embedding.</p>
  
  <p>Ultimately, we decided to standardise our reports using only variations (size, bold, italic etc) of the Arial and Times New Roman fonts - fortunately most of our reports are corporate death-by-spreadsheet fare and not requiring aesthetic appeal.</p>
  
  <p>During PDF creation, these fonts seem to then be substituted by ReportViewer/SSRS for one of the 14 PDF <a href="http://www.pdf-tools.com/pdf/Support/FAQ/Article.aspx?name=PDF-Standard-Fonts" rel="nofollow noreferrer">'standard permissable fonts'</a> (since the standard fonts aren't usually installed on most Windows machines anyway).</p>
  
  <p>So my question is, what exactly are the rules that the PDF renderer on ReportViewer uses during font substitution, rather than embedding a font in the PDF?</p>
  
  <p>Based on <a href="http://www.aivosto.com/vbtips/pdf-optimize.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">this site</a>, and with a bit of trial and error, the following substitutions do seem to be made (from RDL to PDF, list is incomplete):</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Times New Roman => Times</li>
  <li>Courier New => Courier</li>
  <li>Arial => Helvitica</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>I had thought that the substitution was forced because of font embedding legalities, but Times New Roman and Arial are both "Editable" which I understand to be the least restrictive.</p>