The *.cmap and *.properties files in this jar are necessary to produce PDF files with iText that use CJK fonts. Note that whatever value you pass for the 'embedded' parameter with the method BaseFont.createFont, the font WILL NOT BE embedded. To understand why, please read the following information. The fonts that are used in Acrobat Reader when viewing a PDF file that uses CJK fonts will be downloaded in one or more font packs. You can download these fontpacks yourself from this URL: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/acrrasianfontpack.html On this page, you can find the following information: "If the author of an Adobe (R) Portable Document Format (PDF) file embeds CJK and Central European (CE) fonts in a PDF document, then any language version of Adobe Reader (R) software will be able to display the CJK and CE text on any system without additional software. If the author of the PDF document uses CJK or CE fonts but does not embed them in the document, then the correct fonts will need to be installed in order to view the Adobe PDF file on non-native systems." When you download one of the font packs, for instance the font pack for "Chinese Simplified", you will see that the fonts are licensed for use in Adobe Reader only: "Note: The font software contained in this package is being licensed to you solely for use with Adobe (R) Acrobat (R) Reader (R) software ("Acrobat Reader") and is subject to the terms and conditions of the electronic End-User License Agreement accompanying Acrobat Reader." This explains why iText doesn't ever embed a CJK font in the PDF file. These fonts have to be downloaded and used in the context of Adobe Reader; you can not use them with iText to produce a PDF document that has these fonts embedded (as you would do with other fonts) so that they can be viewed in other readers; unless you have a license from Adobe to use these fonts. The *.cmap and *.properties files in this jar, do not contain any font program. They contain information (mappings, metrics,...) that is based on font information distributed on Adobe's site: http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/acrobat/index_advanced.html#pci The original copyright notice of the mappings is as follows: "Copyright 1990-2000 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Patents Pending NOTICE: All information contained herein is the property of Adobe Systems Incorporated. Permission is granted for redistribution of this file provided this copyright notice is maintained intact and that the contents of this file are not altered in any way from its original form. PostScript and Display PostScript are trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated which may be registered in certain jurisdictions." The original files with the mappings are plain text files, and therefore not optimized for being read by a computer software program. That's why they were pre-processed to map directly the Unicode value with the CID value using a 64k char array. No data was changed in this process. Additionally, the iTextAsian.jar contains some properties files with font metrics. These are included for the same reason AFM files are needed (see also the file mustRead.html shipped with the iText.jar). As defined in the PDF reference: "The width information for each glyph is stored both in the font dictionary and in the font program itself. (The two sets of widths must be identical; storing this information in the font dictionary, although redundant, enables a consumer application to determine glyph positioning without having to look inside the font program.)" See PDF Reference sixth edition section 5.1.3 (p393-394). Whereas in the case of CJK fonts, the font program is subject to the Adobe Reader EULA, the font metrics aren't. Page 396: "Glyph metric information is also available separately in the form of Adobe font metrics (AFM) and Adobe composite font metrics (ACFM) files. These files are for use by application programs that generate PDF page descriptions and must make formatting decisions based on the widths and other metrics of glyphs. (...) Specifications for the AFM and ACFM file formats are available in Adobe Technical Note #5004, Adobe Font Metrics File Format Specification; the files can be obtained from the Adobe Solutions Network Web site." Unfortuntately the URL of these files has changed over time, and some metrics files seem to have been removed. However, you'll find sufficient information in the Technical Notes to build your own AFM and/or ACFM files if you ever need font metrics in the Adobe Font Metrics format. Note that the properties files in the iTextAsian.jar contain font metrics, but they are not stored in the AFM or ACFM format. For reasons of performance, the font metrics were stored as key-value pairs. Compare the keys in the properties files with the keys mentioned in Table 5.19 on p456 of the PDF Reference. This way, the necessary key-value pairs can be imported directly into a Font Dictionary that is part of a PDF file created by iText. These specific metrics files were created by Paulo Soares and may be used, copied, and distributed for any purpose and without charge, with or without modification.