[Scribus] PDF, Font embedding

[Gregory Pittman]

Benjamin Dumke wrote:
> Hi,
> I was just browsing through Mantis and found that the "Fonts" tab in the 
> "Save as PDF" dialog seems to create some confusion among people. It 
> does so for me, anyway :)
>
> Correct me if I'm wrong, this is how I understand it:
>
> * The "Available Fonts" box shows all the fonts that are used (or 
> believed to be used) in the current document.
>   
correct
> * The "Fonts to embed" box contains those fonts that are supposed to be 
> embedded into the PDF as is (by just 'inserting the TTF file into the 
> PDF file' to describe it as a non PDF expert). Hence all glyphs from the 
> font are embedded into the PDF, regardless of whether they are used or 
> not. Trying to move an OpenType font into this box does not work; 
> instead it is automatically moved into the "Fonts to outline" box, 
> because the 'classic' PDF versions (<1.6) cannot handle OpenType fonts.
>   
more or less -- PDF < 1.6 cannot *embed* OTF. You want to embed fonts 
whenever you can, BUT make sure you know the licensing for your TTF so 
you know it allows you to do so.
> * The "Fonts to outline" box contains those fonts that will be converted 
> to outline. This does not mean creating graphics objects for every 
> letter on the page (like e.g. Inkscape would if you took a text object 
> and converted it to a path), but instead by converting the used glyphs 
> of this font to a type that PDF _can_ handle (Type 3 as the Adobe Reader 
> tells me) and embedding this resulting font into the PDF.
>
> Is this how it is supposed to work?
>   
No, to the best of my knowledge outlined fonts are converted to vector 
outlines. What you lose is a good way to edit the text in the PDF, since 
the PDF does not contain the actual text. Adobe Reader and others will 
try to turn your outlines to text and does a pretty good job (if you 
export the text from AR for example), but there will likely be errors.

Greg