I have implemented a PDF reader on iOS. One of my users sent me a file for which text extraction was not working, and it turns out that it refers to a BaseFont of name "CourierNew", which is not one of the standard "base 14 fonts" required by the PDF spec; but some software (e.g. iBooks by Apple) knows to treat it as an alias of Courier.
Can anyone point me to a canonical list of such aliases, or is it just something you learn by experience and keep adding special cases?
They are in the PDF reference guide. You will also find others turning up such as ArialMT and TimesNewRomanPS