ghostscript 9.56.1 in lilypond 2.23.14 no longer finds font Helvetica-Bold, but gs in 2.22.1 did

[Jeff Olson]

This MWE works in 2.22.1 but fails in 2.23.14 (running via Frescobaldi 3.1.1 on up-to-date Windows 10):

\version "2.22.1"
\markup {
  \postscript #"
    /Helvetica-Bold findfont
    4 scalefont setfont
    (Hello, World!) show
    "
}

In 2.22 you successfully get "Hello, World!" at top of page.

In 2.23 you get a warning that gs failed, along with a red herring about (let ((book-handler ... yada yada.  See attachment Helvetica-error-Frescobaldi.txt.

To see why gs failed, I used a cygwin window to run the gs that is packaged with 2.23.14 ('/c/Program Files/LilyPond/lilypond-2.23.14/libexec/gs.exe') and added the -dDEBUG option to the options that lilypond supplied.

The specific gs failure is

Error: /invalidfont in findfont
Operand stack:
   Helvetica-Bold

See attachment Helvetical-error-Ghostscript.txt for the full gs command and its output.

Interestingly, saving the postscript intermediate file from 2.22.1 (where Helvetica works) and running the gs from 2.23.14 also failed with the same gs error.

Following advice from the NR on Fonts, I ran font-config-display-fonts in both 2.22.1 and 2.23.14 and neither output mentioned Helvetica. So that isn't how Helvetica was found in 2.22.1.

And Helvetica is not a system font in Window 10 (not in C:\Windows\Fonts) so I can't follow the NR to do #(ly:font-config-add-font "path/to/font-file").

The only way that Helvetica was found in 2.21.1 must be that it was supplied in the ghostscript.

Indeed, even the ghostscript docs (https://ghostscript.readthedocs.io/en/latest/Fonts.html) say it includes "Times, Helvetica, Courier, Symbol, etc."

So, the gs packaged with 2.21.1 includes Helvetica but the gs packaged with 2.23.14 apparently does not.

Wikipedia says that font "Nimbus Sans L" is a metrical equivalent to Helvetica-Bold (per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimbus_Sans#Nimbus_Sans_L) and is also included in Ghostscript:

"Although the characters are not exactly the same, Nimbus Sans L has metrics almost identical to Helvetica and Arial. Nimbus Sans L is one of the Ghostscript fonts, a set of free alternatives to the 35 basic PostScript fonts (which include Helvetica)."

And Nimbus Sans L is also listed in our NY as part of our "sans" family.

But I have not found a way to specify Nimbus Sans L (or other Nimbus San variations) in my postscript findfont in my MWE.

Can someone explain (a) why Helvetical is no longer in 2.23.14's gs and (b) the syntax for specifying Nimbus Sans L properly in my MWE?

Thanks for wading through all this with me.  I've been on a very big lilypond project for 6 years now, and it is so big I have to use the 64-bit version in 2.23 due to memory usage.  But the project also contains 2500+ lines of postscript code for essential diagrams (like guitar fretboards and piano keyboards) so right now I'm still stuck.  Really need Helvetica-Bold or its metrical equivalent to work in 2.23

Jeff

MWE-Helvetica.ly
Description: Text Data

Helvetica-error-Frescobaldi.txt
Description: Text document

Helvetical-error-Ghostscript.txt
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