Font not embedded

[anon]

Hi
I have a customer who sent me a pdf created with dopdf to print posters from. She came back to me saying that the font was wrong in the finished product. The font is "Sprint SF".
I didn't get any warnings in Adobe Acrobat CS2 about font substitution and from what I've read in the dopdf help file it's supposed to have preserved the font. I've now downloaded the latest version and i can't see anywhere in the options to embed (or not embed) fonts.
My customer has sent me the font now, so I will just have to reprint. It's just going to get very costly for me. I'm am concerned because I recommend dopdf on my website and am wondering if this issue is isolated or a problem just associated with this font?
Thanks

Annie

[Dave7417]

I run into this problem all of the time.
Most (if not all,) of the basic pdf writing programmes do not embed fonts. Conversely, most pdf readers (incl Acrobat Reader) substitute missing fonts with "similar" local fonts and do not display any error messages.
Your only protection is to open all pdf files with Photoshop, or similar programme. At least then, you will get a font missing error message.
Dave

[anon]

Thanks, I'll know what to watch out for. It just said on the dopdf info that it preserved fonts although I never used it myself, it seemed like a good option to recommend to my customers.
Even in Acrobat CS2/CS3 the option “Do not send fonts to Adobe PDF” is checked by default. So when sending proofs to my clients they were telling me the fonts were wrong.
Thanks again for the advice,

Annie

[Claudiu (Softland)]

Annie, doPDF does not embed fonts, so if you use fonts that are not installed by default in Windows, they will be substituted by the viewer on your client's computer. Right now what you can do is also send the font to the client, or additionally you could send the file in a different format (a screenshot) so that the client could compare it with what he sees in the PDF.
We are considering adding font embedding as an option in doPDF, but it would be unchecked by default too. Problem with font embedding is the licensing, if we would embed fonts by default that you don't have the right to distribute (commercial ones), you wouldn't be guilty of anything because you wouldn't know - blame would fall on us. That's one of the reasons font are not embedded by default in many applications.
On the short term, maybe we could do a verification if non-common fonts are used and warn the user before the pdf is created that certain fonts might be replaced on the recipient's computer.

[lafayette]

Hello,
I have a big problem with dopdf.
I have a MS WORD file written with the following fonts :

arial

rotis

neue helvetiva.
When I convert this MS word file with dopdf, I can only see the words written with Arial, in the pdf file converted.

The words written with rotis and neue helvetica are invisible.

What can I do ?

May you help me, please ?

Yours sincerely

[Claudiu (Softland)]

If the words written with Rotis/Neue Helvetica are not converted at all (not even replaced) this means they are Type1 fonts, a font type that's not supported by doPDF. The only solution would be to replace that text with TrueType or OpenType similar fonts.
[Update] Starting with version 6.2, doPDF now includes a font embedding option.