Printing-to-PDF the character set

[Psymon]

This is odd...

I wanted to make available the character set for each of my fonts in PDF format, so in the process of doing so, I told Acrobat to "embed all fonts" -- naturally I wanted people to be able to see my font as my font, and not as Times New Roman or something, of course.

Interestingly, however, when I get the finished PDF and look at the document properties, it does NOT list my font in there (under whichever embedded fonts are in there).

When you print-to-PDF, does it basically create images out of all of your glyphs, rather than embedding your font? I'm thinking that's the case -- even the "touch up text" tool in Acrobat doesn't behave like it normally would over text.

I presume that's the case, that one's glyphs are effectively converted to images instead? That's okay if that's the case, I just want to be sure that others out there will be seeing what they're supposed to be seeing.

[Alfred]

When you print-to-PDF, does it basically create images out of all of your glyphs, rather than embedding your font? I'm thinking that's the case -- even the "touch up text" tool in Acrobat doesn't behave like it normally would over text.

Any non-Adobe PDF printer driver that I’ve ever used converts text to curves instead of embedding the font. I think you need to print via Distiller, or export to PDF from an application which includes such an option, if you want fonts other than the common ones like Times and Arial to be rendered as text.

[Erwin Denissen]

Microsoft Word also comes with an option to Export as PDF. I don't know if that makes a difference.

[Psymon]

Interesting. I have the full version of Acrobat X Pro, and definitely checked the option to embed all fonts (or, rather UNchecked the option to NOT embed fonts), but my font didn't embed. And using the "touch up text" tool, when I hover over each glyph with my mouse, it doesn't change to the usual cursor that looks like an uppercase "I" like it should when it's over text -- and so it doesn't even seem to be text of any sort.

And so I tried printing-to-PDF using CutePDF, too, and basically got the same thing (although that program formats it slightly different).

Well, I guess it's not too important, as long as people do actually see what LOOKS like my glyphs.

[Psymon]

Microsoft Word also comes with an option to Export as PDF. I don't know if that makes a difference.

I don't have Word, but I was just thinking that if I really wanted my character set to have the font embedded, I could always design it in Photoshop or something, and print it that way -- but meh, what a ton of work, when I can just print straight from FontCreator instead!

I guess it's okay, how it all worked out. Oh, and I guess I can just load one of my character sets up here to see if it turned out okay -- here's the one for my blackletter font. I presume (hope) you do see my font in there, that the glyphs all look like my blackletter (and not just something "weird" or something)?

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

I created an OpenOffice/LibreOffice template some time ago to work around this problem. The glyphs when printed from FontCreator are output as graphics, which is why they cannot be selected and don't look too sharp.

Load the attached template in LibreOffice or Word, edit the Glyph paragraph style to suit your font, edit any footers or other text that you want, add any missing characters or character sets, and save the template for reuse with other fonts.

The PDF is a quick test that I did with my own font Cankama.

[Psymon]

Omigod, that's quite a font you created there, Bhikkhu! Are you sure you got all the possible glyph slots filled up? I think you may have missed one -- just one.

Seriously, that's quite a font! Talk about "complete"! Very cool about the template, too -- although I don't have LibreOffice nor Word (my word processor is WordPerfect), although I guess I'm okay with what I had with the character set I came up with, my only concern was that people will actually "see" what they're supposed to. It's certainly very easy to just print-to-PDF from FontCreator -- no work at all, just a couple of clicks (although I afterwards edited out the full path of the filename that gets slapped on at the top of each page, changing that to just the font name instead, but that just takes a few moments to do).

Thanks for sharing that, though -- even if I can't make use of the template, your font is inspiring! Here I thought I was done with my fonts, but now you have me wondering about adding in a few more groovy symbols.

Ugh! Does it ever end, updating/improving one's fonts???

[Alfred]

Ugh! Does it ever end, updating/improving one's fonts???

In a word, no.

[Psymon]

LOL -- it's my party, and I'll cry if I want to.