The printer called...some fonts are not embedded. Help!

Report · May 16, 2006

She said if I go into the .pdf and select File > Document Properties, and then select Fonts, I can change this.

Well, I see each of the fonts there, and I see which ones do not have the Embedded label, but how do I go about fixing them to embed them?

Will this require me to do something in Frame first and then create a new .pdf, or can I do it in Acrobat? Do I need to go into the maker.ini file and modify something?

I knew I didn't want to relax too much...something always comes up and the last minute. It's Murphy's Law!

Thanks in advance!

Laini

Report · May 16, 2006

Laini,

Unless you have some third-party Acrobat tools like PitStopPro, you
won't be able to embed the referenced fonts. You'll need to re-create
the PDF output from FM.

The trick is to ensure that your job options for Distiller specify
that all fonts are to be embedded. Which joboption did you use for
Distiller?

Which specific fonts didn't get embedded? If these are printer fonts,
i.e. fonts specific to the postscript printer that you have, and you
don't have the actual fonts installed on your system, then you may be
in a bit of a bind.

Report · May 16, 2006

To distill Arnis's comment....

Assuming you're not using a stand-alone version of Distiller, in FM, do Print Book. With Adobe PDF as the printer, click Setup > Properties. On the Adobe PDF Settings page, uncheck "Do not send fonts to "Adobe PDF."

If that's checked, only the core PS fonts that the printer knows about are included. Anything else is not -- which is what I think happened to you; you used fonts that aren't part of the standard PS set.

IF the checkbox is not checked, the fonts are included, which is counter-intuiive, but the way they do it.

Art

Report · May 16, 2006

Art,

That's not quite correct. Whether the fonts are in the postscript
stream or only referenced there is totally irrelevant. Distiller has
to know where the fonts are and whether to embed them or not. These
options are controlled from the Distiller side of the equation or from
within the font itself.

The Do Not Send Fonts issue only cuts down the size of the postscript
file by simply referencing the font names.

Report · May 16, 2006

Hi guys--

The fonts seem to be things that are not necessarily full-blown fonts, but options that appear from charcter designer, like TmesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT, ArialBoldItalic MT, etc. That confuses me, as they are font sets, but the bold and italic make them characters.

I just talked to one of the co-workers at my old job who was much more knowledgeable about this, and he showed me some of the areas I need to look in, as far as settings.

I have Acrobat 6.0. When I go into Advanced > Distiller on the Menu bar, I select Settings > Edit Adobe PDF Settings. On the Fonts tab, I have all my fonts in the main font source window. None appear in the "Don't Embed" or "Never Embed" windows. I had two source files show up when I opened-- one is C: WINDOWS\FONTS, and the other is Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 6.0\Resource\Font. Right now it's pointing to WINDOWS\FONTS. The other directory has only about five fonts in it, and none of them are missing.

The "Embed All Fonts" and "Subset embedded fonts when percent of other characters is less than 100%" checkboxes are both checked. "Warn and continue" is also selected.

Any more insight? If worse comes to worst, I can send them the Framemaker files and graphics and zip them rather than the .pdf, but it's going to take SOOOOO much longer.

Report · May 16, 2006

Laini,

A "font" is a specific instance of a typeface, e.g. Arial-Bold. The
font family (or typeface) for this would be Arial.

From your description, most things sound correct.
On the Distiller Font Locations dialogue, is there a check box for
"Ignore TrueType versions of standard postscript fonts" ? If so, this
should be checked (I can't remember if this is a new Acrobat v.7
feature). Also change the "When embedding fails:" option to "Cancel
Job". This will let you know right away if something odd is going on
with your fonts.

Are you actually using the TimesNewRomanPS -MT and Arial -MT families
or TrueType versions of these fonts? If you're using TT fonts, then
you need to check your AdobePDF printer instance to make sure that the
font is being sent instead of substituted.

Open the Printers & Faxes control panel and right-click on the
AdobePDF printer and select the Properties option.

On the General Tab, click Printing Preferences and select the Layout
Tab. Click on the Advanced button.

On this dialogue:
- change "Graphic > Print Quality" to 600dpi
- change "Graphic > TrueType Font:" to "Download as Softfont"
- change "Document Options > Postscript Options > TrueType Font
Download Option:" to "Native TrueType"

Click OK and then OK on the Preferences dialogue.

Now go to the Properties Advanced Tab and click on the "Printing
Defaults..." button. You'll get the same looking dialogues as the
previous Printing Preferences one.

Verify that all of the above settings are set the same.

Click OK and then OK on the Defaults dialogue.

Now go to the Device Settings tab of the Properties.

Set the following parameters:
- Output Protocol: Binary
- Convert Gray text to Postscript Gray: Yes
- Convert Gray Graphics to Postscript Gray: Yes
- Add Euro Currency.... : No (unless you need to use euros in your
text)

Now click on the "+" beside the "Font Substitution Table" to expand
the list of TT fonts available.

For *all* of these set them to "Don't Substitute"

Click OK to finish up.

Now you can try another copy of your output to PDF. When you have the
PDF created, check the File > Document Properties > Fonts to make sure
that all are embedded before sending to your printer.

I hope this helps,

Arnis

Report · May 16, 2006

I'm not sure, Arnis....
If you select Adobe PDF as your printer, as you commonly would from FM,
I think fonts outside the core 18/35 have to be embedded. Otherwise, you have to hope the printer has the same fonts that you used... If they're embedded, the embedded glyphs are used as the primary font source, before any local files are looked at, aren't they?

Art

Report · May 16, 2006

When creating the PDF, the only "printer" that should be used is the
AdobePDF printer instance, which only has Courier and Symbol defined
as resident fonts. Any other "printer fonts" used in creating the
original document are at the user's own peril and FM will warn you
about the missing fonts when switching printers anyway.

Report · May 16, 2006

Lains,
Check to see if you have a c:\PSFONTS directory. If so, that should be added to your Acrobat font list too.

Art

Report · May 16, 2006

Hi Art--

No PSFONTS directory. Should I create one?

L.

Report · May 16, 2006

Lains,
If you use Adobe Type Manager, or Adobe PS fonts, that's the default directory for PostScript fonts. It's usually created automatically. Because you don't have the directory, you probably aren't using fonts that require it.
So, no, there's no need to create it; it would be empty.

Art

Report · May 17, 2006

hardly anyone's going to be using Adobe Type Manager on Windows these days though, are they?
PostScript Type1 fonts have been supported natively since Win2000.

Are there any corporate users out there still using Win95, Win98 or WinNT4.0 ?

Report · May 18, 2006

Arnis--

Sorry for the delay in replying! I was having to get the Framemaker files themselves ready to give them since the .pdf wasn't cutting it. But I want to make sure it's OK for next edition.

The strange thing is that it is Times New Roman and Courier-- fonts that are standard Windows fonts that are giving the problems. This print company once tried opening our files on Macs, and my husband wanted me to verify that they weren't doing it again, since those aren't standard for Macs. But they insist they aren't.

Most of the ones that are giving the problems are actually Open Type fonts. How much difference would there be for performing your steps for Open Type fonts? Do you know? I checked, and I DO have the "Ignore True Type versions of standard postscript fonts" option. (The Arial, Times New Roman and Courier SAY they are True Type when I check the .pdf, but appear with O symbols when I check the font directory, so I assume that means they are Open.)

Thank you for the very thorough reply! I want to try it and see if it works, but want to make sure I verify before making major font changes to my system! I don't know what I would do without this forum!

Laini

Report · May 18, 2006

Laini,

The newer TT fonts are actually one form of OpenType fonts. You really
should ignore the symbolshown and instead look at the file extension.
If it is ".otf", then it's an OpenType Font, if it's ".ttf", then it's
a TrueType.

Report · May 18, 2006

Laini,

At some point, it'd be worth your time to ask a friend / different printer / quick copy shop to try to open and print from your .pdfs.

Just as a reality check.

Art

Report · May 19, 2006

Aha. I see what you mean. Just about all of them (other than Frutiger and Caslon) all have .ttf extensions. So I will try your steps.

I definitely have issues with the print shop, but that's another matter entirely, and due to possible nepotism between companies, may be something I can't do anything about. But I definitely plan on negotiating and checking the pdfs elsewhere. The owner of the company insisted I be in Dallas to be near the support function, but all the engineers are in California, and so is the printer. English is not their first language, and it is definitely frustrating!

Laini

Report · May 19, 2006

It worked! It worked!

Arnis, I can't tell you what a huge help this was! I owe you many beers (or the poison of your choice!)

Thanks again!
L.

Report · Jun 09, 2006

David- I have to disagree when you say "hardly anyone's going to be using Adobe Type Manager on Windows these days though, are they? PostScript Type1 fonts have been supported natively since Win2000."

Have you paid close attention to what printer you are using? If you are not using a postscript printer or Acrobat PDF with FrameMaker, then you are not able check off "generate Acrobat data" in in the print document dialog box. Maybe you don't need PDFs for your customer and bookmarks. Yes this option is not needed for commercial printing, but many of us have Type1 fonts and countless documents we have done over the years that use these fonts and are still being maintained. The light version of ATM is free from Adobe for those that didn't buy it, it works.

Report · Jun 09, 2006

> but many of us have Type1 fonts and countless documents we have done over
the years that use these fonts and are still being maintained. The light
version of ATM is free from Adobe for those that didn't buy it, it works.

ATM works. But so does not having ATM. There are only two reasons to put ATM
on your computer:

1) You want support for Multiple Master fonts
2) You're on Windows ME or 98 or something earlier

If you're on Windows 2000 or XP, you've already got ATM built into the OS,
so, yes, hardly anyone's going to be using ATM these days, and most of the
people that are using it don't realize they don't need it.

Ken Benson

Report · Jun 13, 2006

Yeah, I should have rephrased that to "hardly anyone NEEDS to use ATM on Windows these days."
Whether or not they realise this is a different matter. Just because people write documentation for a living, doesn't mean they read it ;-)

Report · Jun 14, 2006

Ken- Not sure where you got your info, but Windows 2000 does not have ATM build in, only the ATM font driver. Here is what Adobe says:

Note that Windows 2000 Professional ships with the ATM font driver, which runs in the background to display PostScript fonts. On other Windows platforms, you install the font driver (and the other ATM component, the font manager (also known as the control panel)) when you install ATM. In Windows 2000 Professional, uninstalling ATM removes only the font manager, not the font driver.

Type 1 font is an outline font that is designed to work with PostScript printers. The outlines can be scaled and rotated. With OpenType technology, Windows fully supports Type 1 fonts.

David- Maybe you don't read what you write, but some of us that write documentation for a living do.
Large companies keep documentation for both legal reasons and because their documents are still being used and updated.
In the company I work for, there are some 10K active documents stored. Like everything else, changes do happen, and there is always a chance that one or more of these documents may have to be updated.
For those that don't use XP but use Windows NT or Windows 2000, ATM is recommend to publish hard copy or to generate a PDF using type1 fonts.

Report · Jun 14, 2006

> Windows 2000 does not have ATM build in, only the ATM font driver.

Functionally, what difference do you see between ATM and the ATM font
driver? On PC operating systems before Windows 2000, you had to install ATM
in order to be able to install and use Type 1 fonts. On Windows 2000 and XP,
Type 1 font support is built-in (your ATM font driver), and Type 1 fonts are
installed through the Windows Control Panel, the same way as Truetype fonts.

Either way, you *do not* need to install ATM for Windows 2000 or XP. Both
W2K and XP handle fonts the same way.

> With OpenType technology, Windows fully supports Type 1 fonts.

Not sure what this means, except that W2K and XP support Opentype and Type 1
fonts (as well as Type 1 Opentype fonts).

> For those that don't use XP but use Windows NT or Windows 2000, ATM is
recommend to publish hard copy or to generate a PDF using type1 fonts.

Recommended by who? Yes, if you're on NT, then ATM is not just recommended
but necessary. But if you're on W2K or XP, *you don't need it*.

Ken Benson

Report · Jun 15, 2006

>>For those that don't use XP but use Windows NT or Windows 2000, ATM is recommend to publish hard copy or to generate a PDF using type1 fonts.

What about people still using Windows 3.1? And clay tablets?

Report · Jun 15, 2006

There is always the chisle mode! Don't knock the clay tablets, at least it a hard copy.

Report · Jun 19, 2006

Actually, stone tablet *are* the best archive format!
We're still able to read ones from about 3000BC.
If there's any current computer media still readibly in 5000 years time, I'll be pleasantly surprised!