Holiday Incentives Now Available on New Volvos
Explore Incentives
If you have ever opened a PDF file—only to see a flurry of dots, jumbled characters, or a persistent error message mentioning , CIDFont+F2 , CIDFont+F3 , CIDFont+F4 , CIDFont+F5 , or CIDFont+F6 —you are experiencing a common issue related to font embedding and PDF generation.
In many PDF processing engines (especially older Adobe PostScript and Acrobat versions), CIDFonts are referenced internally using generic names like , CIDFontF2 , etc. These are not actual font names but placeholders for subsets embedded in a document.
In the PDF structure, a CID-keyed font isn’t a standalone font that can be directly used. Instead, it functions as a of a Type 0 font. The actual mapping between character codes and the CIDs is defined by a CMap resource, which acts like a translation table. This separation makes CID fonts highly efficient but also introduces complexity that can lead to the placeholder issues discussed here.
The /BaseFont is the actual font family. The cidfontf1 is merely a reference handle.
Before understanding F1–F6, we must understand the system.
For now, understanding these six identifiers ensures you can troubleshoot, repair, and future-proof your PDF workflows.
Sometimes, simply opening the file doesn't work, but importing it does. Open a new, blank Illustrator document. Fix: Use File > Place to import the problematic PDF.
Each CIDFont dictionary contains a /W array specifying the glyph widths for various CID ranges. For cidfontf2 through cidfontf6 , these arrays differ based on the script or style (Bold, Italic).