I have several hundred Adobe Illustrator files that I'm working on converting to Inkscape. Many of them contain text, generally in Helvetica-9 and -10. Inkscape changes these to Vera-9 and Vera-10, and compared to the corresponding Helvetica fonts, these are about 15% bigger. Now I'm looking at how to handle this conversion, and I want to do it once and do it right, because it's such a large number of files. Basically I have a lot of wishes, which I'm sure are not all mutually compatible, and I'd appreciate any advice on how to get as many of my wishes as possible to come true. The files are illustrations for some textbooks, which I do using pdftex.

wish list:

1 The books can be edited and printed (by me or by other people) without using any non-free software or fonts.

2 The text in the figures is close to the size it used to be, and doesn't require too much hand-tweaking.

3 The fonts used in the text (Computer Modern and, presently, Helvetica) look compatible with the fonts used in the figures.

4 The resulting files can be edited on the screen in Inkscape, and they look right.

5 The files look good when people download the PDF and view them on the screen in Acrobat Reader on Windows. (I sell the books in print, and they're also free online as PDF files.)

6 The files look good when my printer prints them as illustrations in my books.

7 The next time I do a new edition, I don't get calls from the printer saying "We couldn't output your document, what's this goofy Vera font?" I also don't get 1000 printed books and then notice that some text was messed up on output. (It's scary, because we do direct digital printing, so a nice looking galley doesn't mean anything -- the actual printing is done on a different device.)

So far, I've thought of a few possibilities, and I'm curious if anyone can tell me if they are less than optimal:

method A: Write a little Perl script to convert Vera-9 to Vera-7.64, and Vera-10 to Vera-8.50. Output to EPS with the fonts converted to outlines. - accomplishes 1, 2, 4, 7 - doesn't accomplish 3, 5, and 6, because the outlined fonts render badly in PDF viewers and on printers

method B: Like A, but don't convert the fonts to outlines. - accomplishes 1, 2, 4, 5, 6 - may accomplish 7, if I can get pdftex to embed Vera - may accomplish 3, but I haven't been able to test it; Vera appears much heavier than Helvetica, but this could be simply due to the limitations of rendering using method A

method C Buy a proprietary Helvetica screen font for Linux. - accomplishes 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 (Helvetica is one of the basic 13 fonts supported by all PDF viewers and PS printers.)

mehod D Convert all the sans serif in the text from Helvetica to Vera, and get pdftex to embed Vera in the PDF. Don't have Inkscape convert the fonts to outlines. - accomplishes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 - may or may not accomplish 7...it would worry me