Cidfont F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 Install Page

Windows often hides CIDFont mapping inside Adobe Acrobat or Ghostscript for Windows.

macOS has its own font cache and PDFKit.

Alternatively, use the cidfmap method as described for Linux.

Edit cidfmap (e.g., /usr/share/ghostscript/*/Resource/Init/cidfmap) or add a custom file.

Example entry:

/F1 /F1 ;
/F2 /F2 ;
...

Or, for substitution with a known font if CIDFonts are actually CJK:

/F1 /NotoSansCJK-Regular ;

If you’ve ever worked with PostScript files, PDFs from specialized printers, or Asian language documents, you might have run across an error like:
"Cannot find CIDFont /F1" or "Missing font F3".

Then you search for a solution and land on a thread mentioning cidfont f1 f2 f3 f4 f5 f6 install. It looks cryptic — but it’s actually a simple, fixable issue.

Let’s break down what CIDFonts are, what F1–F6 refer to, and exactly how to install them. cidfont f1 f2 f3 f4 f5 f6 install

Run this command to see which CIDFonts your PDF expects:

pdffonts problem.pdf

Sample output:

name           type         encoding     emb sub uni object ID
-------------- ------------ ------------ --- --- --- ---------
F1             CID Type 0   Identity-H   yes no  no       4
F2             CID Type 0   Identity-H   yes no  no       5
F3             CID Type 0   Identity-H   yes no  no       6

Here, F1, F2, F3 are embedded subsets. If they are not embedded (emb no), you must install matching system fonts.

You’re likely here because of one of these specific errors: Windows often hides CIDFont mapping inside Adobe Acrobat

The solution is not to download "F1.ttf" (it doesn’t exist as a real font). Instead, you must map these generic F-tags to actual CIDFonts present on your system—or install the missing Asian fonts.

If using dvips or pdfTeX, you may need to update the CIDFont map file.

Edit or create /usr/local/texlive/texmf-local/fonts/map/pdftex/updmap/cid.map (or system equivalent).
Add lines like:

F1 F1 <F1
F2 F2 <F2
...

Then run:

sudo updmap-sys --enable Map cid.map