OpenType fonts
Cross platform issues
There shouldn’t be any! OpenType has been created to be truly platform independant. Fonts can be copied back and forth between Windows and Macintosh systems. To achieve this, OpenType fonts do not use the resource fork on Macintoshes.
Outputting OpenType fonts
When OpenType was launched, Adobe licensed its ATM rasterizer code to Apple and Microsoft at no charge. This means that the operating systems of these companies can offer system-level output support for these fonts. You do not need an expensive printer or RIP to be able to output OpenType fonts.
Until the release of PDF 1.6 (Acrobat 7), OpenType did not really exist within PDF files. Any application creating PostScript or PDF would convert OpenType fonts to Type 1 or TrueType font on the fly. That is why you never saw OpenType fonts show up in the preflighting reports of PitStop or other tools. Since PDF 1.6, it is possible to natively embed OpenType fonts in PDF files. I must admit that I haven’t seen any pop up. I am not aware of any issues outputting such files.
OpenType fonts containing TrueType outlines may not print properly on older PostScript level 1 output devices.
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Hi Laurens,
How could we embed OT fonts in PDF?… I’m trying to use OT fonts in Indesign CS4 producing PDF 1.6 and 1.7 and the resulting embedded font in the PDF is always Type 1 or TT… I would like to achieve real OT embedding to test if a preflight detects it or not…
Might I use an special kind of OT faces or something similar?
Thanks in advanced!
Best regards,
Alex
As far as I know you cannot embed OpenType fonts as OpenType when exporting directly to PDF from InDesign.
Try this instead:
- Print your document to a PostScript file without embedding any fonts.
- In the Acrobat Distiller settings, make sure the option to embed OpenType is activated and that no subsetting takes place. Set the PDF level to 1.7.
- Distill your PostScript file.
You should now have a PDF with OpenType embedded as OpenType – at least that is what PitStop preflight reports.
Just in time!
All right! Laurens, my problem was solved thanks to you. I didn’t think in Postscript + Distiller to reproduce the OT embedding. Thanks!
I can embed a Type 1 font (Myriad Pro Regular) following your instructions, but I can’t do that with an TrueType OT font like Lucida Console.
((Unfortunately) I’m working on Windows Vista now.)
Thanks a lot!
Alex
I just had w7 installed and all my type seems smaller now. Is there a way to change to larger type. Thanks
Go to the control panels and select the ‘Display’ control panel. It has an option to change the default text size. Mine is set to 120% because text is also too tiny on my Dell portable.