[scribus] Missing Fonts in PDF

Peter Nermander peter at nermander.se
Tue Apr 21 05:34:32 UTC 2015


> They updated their printer software and it seems that they can work with
> it now. But I still wonder what the difference is. Is Scribus producing a
> PDF with less information (subset) than ID or other DTP software (full font
> information)?
>
> Or is this just one printer's opinion?
>
> Or is this a result of using TT-fonts, versus other fonts (OTF, PS-Type-1,
> ...)?
>
>
Sub-setting is very common, especially with modern fonts containing many
glyphs. A single font can be 15-20 MB in size, if you only use 1/10th of
the glyphs in the font, why embed the whole font? Ten fonts of that size
would make the PDF 150 MB larger.

Also a PDF can not contain all types of fonts, I think for example OTF is
one exception (there is a page on the wiki about this). In that case
Scribus will have to convert the font, and I think this may look just like
a subset font.

So subsetting does not prevent the PDF from printing correctly, it may
however affect the possibilities to do edits to the PDF.

In "the old days" the printer used to do "last minute edits" of the PDF
before printing (because the PDF was delivered on a CD-ROM or zip-disk by
regular mail, so it could take a day or two to send a new PDF), but today
it's generally better if you do the edit yourself (because you can send a
new PDF to the printer in minutes).

/Peter
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.scribus.net/pipermail/scribus/attachments/20150421/c9e9fce6/attachment.html>


More information about the scribus mailing list