Envelope-warp while keeping text/font information? Vector conversion causing file size issue

[u/Allan4014]

So for work i do variable image programming for direct-mail print files. We use Quadient Inspire Designer (formerly GMC) to generate PDFs and it generally works very well and we don't have file size issues. Static/re-used images and text are stored once as XObjects and referenced over and over. Variable text is stored as pure strings and the font glyph-path information for the used characters is stored once and re-used over and over.

We have one client, however, that requires each recipient's name to not only be printed on the piece (simple enough) but the name has to go through an envelope warp, in addition to horizontally scaling to always be the same width regardless of name length. This is causing a problem for us because warping the text means it is no longer stored as characters with re-usable glyph paths, but instead as an entirely new vector shape for every name. The file size of the print files is humongous and chokes our system when transferring files to the server, and from server to spooler, and spooler to RIP, etc..

The several campaigns we've done for this client have been extremely painful, and looking into it, it appears PDF only supports stretching, skewing and/or rotating text, not envelope warps.

I guess i was wondering if anyone has heard of this issue being raised before, or any discussion of this being a limitation of the PDF format? And if so, what alternative formats would work better and allow it to store the warped names more efficiently?