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M
Matilde5FD2
Participant
April 19, 2021
Question

Fonts won't embed

  • April 19, 2021
  • 1 reply
  • 3127 views

Good evening, 

I just downloaded the 30 day trial for Adobe Acrobat DC, because the previous program I was using (DoPDF) didn't seem to be able to embed fonts while converting in PDF. This happened with the last document I created: the first time I converted a document was successful, and the only difference is that this last one contains some png images I downloaded from Canva, one at the start of each page. 

The font is Bahnschrift Condensed, and I am going to attach an image of the PDF.

This happened with the document saved in .rtf as well as in .odt.

I installed today the last version of OpenOffice, tried again and obtained the same result. 

I tried to convert to PDF with the feature given by OpenOffice itself, and that way all the characters change, but at least that way they are all the same. At this point though I would still like to see if it is possible to have the PDF in Bahnschrift Condensed.

If someone were to take some time to help me out I would be extremely grateful, I am not fond of this subject, so I hope it's just a trivial error. 

Lastly english is not my first language, so let me apologize for any mistake I might have made.

Thank you! 🙂

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

Dov Isaacs
Dov Isaacs
Legend
April 19, 2021

Bahnschrift is actually a single OpenType Variable TTF font containing two axes, width and weight, and 15 instances of that font derived from that single OpenType Variable TTF font.

 

Some important facts to consider:

 

(1)  There are two different varieties of OpenType Variable fonts. OpenType Variable CFF2 uses compressed Bezier curve outlines similar to those of Type1 and OpenType CFF fonts. OpenType Variable TTF uses quadratric curve outlines similar to TrueType and OpenType TTF fonts.

 

(2)  The current PDF specification (including PDF 2.0) does not directly support any OpenType Variable fonts. In order to use such fonts in PDF files, whatever creates the PDF file must synthesize instances of the OpenType Variable font and embed those instances,

 

(3)  In terms of Microsoft Office, although OpenType Variable fonts will properly display, neither Microsoft's built-in save-as-PDF nor Acrobat's PDFMaker can properly generate PDF if OpenType Variable fonts are used due to bugs in Microsoft Office itself.

 

(4)  If you try printing to the Adobe PDF PostScript printer driver instance in Windows, use of OpenType Variable fonts will not work due Microsoft's failure to put support for OpenType Variable fonts into the Microsoft PostScript printer driver, PSCRIPT5.DLL.

 

(5)  We cannot speak for OpenOffice, but when I tried using OpenType Variable fonts with that application, output failed.

 

(6)  We (and Microsoft) are aware of a major bug in Windows 10 in which text display stops working entirely (requiring system reboot) if you try to use any OpenType Variable CFF2 font outside of any Adobe application.

 

At this point, at Adobe we regretfully must advise customers that use of OpenType Variable fonts under Windows (including the Microsoft Bahnschrift font) is really not viable. We are working with Microsoft to try getting these problems resolved.

 

- Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)
    M
    Matilde5FD2Author
    Participant
    April 20, 2021

    Thank you so much, at least now I know there is nothing I can do about it. I am just going to avoid those fonts. 

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