Cidfont F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 Full May 2026

In 1993, Adobe introduced a revolutionary new format called the CID-Keyed Font. Unlike a standard font where every character is stored in a linear, fixed order (A is slot 65, B is slot 66), a CID font is "dumb." It is simply a massive collection of glyph images (the "C"ollection "ID"entifiers).

The intelligence was moved to a separate external file called a CMap (Character Map). When you typed a Japanese character, the computer would look up the code in the CMap, find the corresponding ID number, and pull the correct design from the massive CID library.

This changed the game. It allowed fonts to contain tens of thousands of characters without breaking the system. It was the backbone of professional publishing for decades. cidfont f1 f2 f3 f4 f5 f6 full

You have two options:

Adobe defined six primary character collections based on the script and region. Each collection has a unique Registry and Ordering string (e.g., Adobe-Japan1). The "F" number is an internal shorthand for these collections. In 1993, Adobe introduced a revolutionary new format

Download and install the full versions of those fonts (not the subsets). For CJK, use:

Registry-Ordering: Adobe-Korea1 Primary Use: Korean Hangul and Hanja (Hanzi borrowed into Korean). Output example: name type encoding emb sub uni

Run:

pdffonts -subst yourfile.pdf

Output example:

name                              type         encoding         emb sub uni object ID
--------------------------------- ------------ ---------------- --- --- --- ---------
CIDFont+F1                        CID Type 0   Identity-H       yes yes yes      4  0
CIDFont+F2                        CID Type 0   Identity-H       yes yes yes      5  0

There are three primary scenarios where you will encounter the full F1–F6 sequence.