Quote:
Originally Posted by kaiserwilhelm
A consultant to our company is telling us that type cannot reflow (if all fonts are embedded).
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I'm not Leonard too...
AFAIK, theorically, fonts cannot reflow in a PDF if they are embedded... but:
• first, there is a difference between fonts completely or partially embedded,
• second, PDF are part of computing systems, and computing systems always have bugs...: bugs in the native application, bugs in the fonts used in the doc, bugs in exporting libraries, bugs in .PS creation and in distilling softwares, bugs in Acrobat and Reader...
... and I saw problems with fonts in some PDF:
- euro symbol disappearing,
- missing bold or italic,
- fonts changing,
- PDF looking correct in a office/web Mac, but not correct on my DTP Mac, just because some standard Apple and Microsoft font like Helvetica, Arial or TimeNewRoman are normally installed in the office Mac and are not installed in my DTP Mac...
Most of these problems occured in PDF made with "exotic" non-DTP systems (Word + PDFcreator for example), mainly using Apple and Microsoft default office/web fonts, and not embedding or badly embedding some fonts..., but also occured in exported PDF from InDesign or XPress...
But your consultant is not completely wrong: in a PDF you cannot have important text reflow as in XPress or Indesign, with 1 or 2 words jumping from the end of a line to the beginning of the following line, and 10 words disapearring at the end of the paragraph, showing the red "text reflow indicator" in the bottom right of the block...
... just because in a PDF there is no line of words, nor paragraph, because all lines are fractionnated/broken in many small pieces of text, sometimes with pieces as short as one letter.
So, even if the font is missing and replaced by another font with different a width, all the letters and lines will stay at their places, just having another shape and being too close from each other (and sometimes touching) or with too much space between each other.
