Can someone explain this please?

[William Overington]

In the thread

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/76449-questions-with-fonts/

on my computer I do not get the choice about embedding fonts and subsetting them in a PDF when exporting a PDF.

Yet the two other people posting in the thread both can.

I think that I might have seen those choices the other day but cannot be sure as I have also been using PagePlus.

Can someone explain this please?

William

 

[MEB]

Hi William Overington,
After clicking the More button on the PDF export dialog, it's possible you are not seeing all the options available. There's a scrollbar on the right, make sure you scroll it to the bottom. You should then see the Embed fonts dropdown.

[William Overington]

Hi

Thank you.

That is it, I found it.

A matter arising. I note that Publisher only offers All Fonts or Text as Curves and then the offer to subset embedded fonts.

Is this so that issues of not embedding common fonts and then something going wrong because precisely the same version of the "common font" is not available when an attempt is made to display the PDF?

By the way, if conversion to curves is used so as not to embed a font, maybe for legal reasons, then if, say, the PDF has the letter e say five times, does the PDF embed the converted to curves version of the letter e once or five times please?

William

 

[mac_heibu]

I wouldn’t really think about not embedding fonts, only because one assumes, that the viewer’s machine has it installed as a standard font. First, these fonts may not be installed, what causes use of fallback fonts. Second there are differences between font versions, which may cause fonts to be wrongly displayed. This is especially true for kerning.

In other words: Don’t even think about not embedding fonts!

Generally spoken, embedding the complete font instead of a subset isn’t necessary (any more). It  simply enlarges the PDF’s file size. Normally, editing text in PDFs doesn’t depend on a font being embedded completely or as a subset: Since Acrobat 6 (July 2003) for copyright reasons a PDF text only can be edited, if the exact same font (name, version, format) is installed on your machine –regardless wether the font is completely embedded or as a subset. You may want to read this little statement of Enfocus (developer of „PitStop“): Enfocus

If the font is converted to vector, every „character“ is present as a graphic of its own. But this isn’t the main issue. The main issue is, that the font’s hinting values get lost, what may cause distorted glyphs when outputted on lower resolution devices like laser printers or digital printing machines, which work with lower resolution than offset printing.

[fde101]

58 minutes ago, mac_heibu said:

Don’t even think about not embedding fonts!

This assumes that the license for the font allows embedding.  Some do not.

[mac_heibu]

Yes some do not. I am working for more than 20 years as a designer and never encountered such a font. And if: I won‘t use it. It is that simple.

[Alfred]

2 minutes ago, mac_heibu said:

Yes some do not. I am working for more than 20 years as a designer and never encountered such a font.

I’m quite surprised that you’re aware of their existence but have never actually encountered them! However, it does seem to be much more common for fonts to allow at least ‘Preview and Print’ (and often ‘Editable’) embedding.

[fde101]

Some of them can be tricky - for example, this license seems to indicate that one of their license types allows you to embed the entire font under limited circumstances but not a subset of the font (!):

https://typofonderie.com/licensing/embedding/

 

Also, examples of others having run into such restrictions:

https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2462663

https://community.jaspersoft.com/wiki/can-not-export-ttf-font-pdf-cannot-be-embedded-due-licensing-restrictions-what-reason-error