Outline fonts in PDF (I know, I know!)

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
May 29, 2024
2 replies
3765 views

I am having a tedious argument with an 'expert' who is making what to me are nonsensical claims about PDF. While I don't consider my PDF knowledge lacking, I rarely stray into the fog of standards, color conversion, etc. at the complex end of things, so I am not sure of a few things.

First, he claims that "All Word save as PDF actions outline the text." To me, this is sheer nonsense; I just exported several pages using different Word/MS Office modes and can't even find a "convert to outlines" option. Comments?

Also, while casting around for information, I came across this "blogspert" post:
https://updf.com/edit-pdf/pdf-to-outline/

Is it just me, or is this almost complete nonsense? especially for a 2024 post?

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer try67

- Anyone who claims something like that is no "PDF expert", to be polite.

- That article is pure nonsense. Each one of the sentences in the first paragraph is totally wrong, so I didn't bother reading further.

JR Boulay

Community Expert

In French we call this kind of article "un tissu de conneries".
I'll leave you to find the translation, otherwise my post would be censored. 😉

Acrobate du PDF, InDesigner et Photoshopographe

try67

Correct answer

Community Expert

- Anyone who claims something like that is no "PDF expert", to be polite.

- That article is pure nonsense. Each one of the sentences in the first paragraph is totally wrong, so I didn't bother reading further.

try67

Community Expert

If you really want to outline the text in your PDF file (which you shouldn't do, as it's very inconsiderate for the viewer, since they won't be able to scale it properly any longer, or search it, export it, etc.), there's a built-in Preflight command that will do it in seconds for you. The entire process described in that article is totally unnecessary.

try67

Community Expert

Oh, I need no advice on that point. The entire business of outlining fonts at any level, other than to make them editable graphic elements in Illustrator, is at very best a decade out of date. Over in InDesign we frequently get newer users who are trying to comply with printer demands to submit outlined PDFs; the universal solution is "Find a new printer."

But the whole amateur-publishing, EPUB, Kindle, kitchen-table crowd has it in their rusty toolbox and insists on its value in "fixing the crappy output of those apps." I was just surprised to read this particular bit of nonsense, since I haven't seen a way to get outlined output from Word in... generations.

The fault in such cases is usually with the viewer application, which can't handle PDF files correctly. So they convert them to images ("outline" them) so that they at least show up half-decently on those low-res e-Ink screens. There's no other real reason to do it, though.

And we here also advise people to switch printers when they get such requests from them. A printer shop that can't handle PDF files is not to be trusted.

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