We have utilized the "0" on subset fonts for years. We need the fonts to be embedded.
Today we had pdfs come in that were full of subset fonts. We did testing with the original files in 17.1 and 17.4 - and the results showed that 17.4 has something going on.
Out of 40 fonts used, in 17.1, only two were subset. In 17.4, it was over 35.
*We did do a test where we changed it to 100 instead of 0 (in case Adobe reversed the number again like they did 8 years ago). In that case, it was 40/40 subset.
How do we get this information to Adobe? Anyone else seeing it? At this point, we downgraded and all of our customers are going to have to do the same.
I assume that you are referring to InDesign 17.4 since you only specified a release number and not a product!
There are at least three separate issues here:
(1) What numeric percentage setting is correct for specifying that a font is not to be subsetted when embedded in an exported PDF? (This is the Fonts setting on the Advanced tab of the Export Adobe PDF dialog in InDesign.)
To quote the InDesign Help on this topic:
Subset Fonts When Percent Of Characters Used Is Less Than — Sets the threshold for embedding complete fonts based on how many of the font’s characters are used in the document. If the percentage of characters used in the document for any given font is exceeded, then that specific font is completely embedded. Otherwise, the font is subsetted. Embedding complete fonts increases file size, but if you want to make sure you completely embed all fonts, enter 0 (zero). You can also set a threshold in the General Preferences dialog box to trigger font subsetting based on the number of glyphs a font contains.
What is key here is that there are two values you need to set.
The first value is in the
Advanced tab of the
Export Adobe PDF dialog; this should be set to
0 to force full font embedding. (The default value used with all the predefined
Adobe PDF Presets is
100 which indicates that subsetting is to be employed unless the document actually references all the glyphs in the font.
The second value which overrides the first is in the
General tab of the general InDesign
Preferences. There is a setting for
Font Downloading and Embedding. Always subset fonts with glyph counts greater than: where you specify the maximum number of glyphs in the font that will allowed to be fully embedded.
Depending upon how long you have used InDesign, you may find that this value may be defaulted to
1000 or
2000. Thus, if you have a font that in total has more than that number of glyphs defined, that font will always be subsetted in the PDF file. 1000 or 2000 glyphs may sound quite a large number, but with many modern fonts, that is definitely not the case. For example, many of the system fonts in Windows (including Arial, Times New Roman, Calibri, and Palatino Linotype), many so-called “Pro” OpenType fonts, and even many Google fonts routinely have many thousands of such glyph definitions to accommodate numerous international character sets (including Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, etc.). If embedding “full” fonts is that critically important to you (separate issue), then perhaps a value of
10000 might be more appropriate here.
(2) What is the expected behaviour of this setting versus the observed behaviour and is there any rhyme or reason for such behaviour?
Observing the rules from
(1) above, I created a test file in InDesign using a plethora of fonts from different sources and types (pun intended) including, OpenType CFF, OpenType TTF, and TrueType fonts including some fonts with gargantuan glyph counts. Exporting PDF using the settings above resulted in all the fonts being fully embedded with one caveat. Some fonts were double embedded, first as a “full” font and secondly as a CID Identity-H encoded font (for optimization of the PDF access to certain glyphs). Unfortunately, this forum limits file size attachments and thus I could not upload the sample PDF file. However, this is a screen shot of the page:
(If you write me, I'll gladly send you the actual 2MB PDF file!)
The only time where embedding would not occur would be if you were using certain CJK (Asian) fonts or fonts that specifically prohibited embedding in PDF (via the
fsType flag in the font's
OS/2 table).
(3) What practical reason is there for requesting or requiring anyone for “fully embed” any or all fonts in a PDF file exported from InDesign or for that matter any other application?
I know of no “modern” RIP or PDF workflow product that conforms in its operation to the ISO PDF specification that requires a font to be fully embedded. There are plenty of
bubba missas (Yiddish for urban legends, literally grandmothers' tales) associated with whether you should or shouldn't fully embed fonts in PDF files or even PostScript files.
In fact, there are only two use cases in which fully embedding a file is either necessary or appropriate:
The first is if you have created a PDF form and want the fields to use a particular, non-system font. In that case, you really need to have the
whole font embedded, not just what InDesign and most applications embed, but rather the full OpenType font including all the layout tables which are not normally embedded via layout applications. (Acrobat does embed such full OpenType fonts if possible for forms use!)
The second use case is that in which you think that you can or will subsequently “edit” the text of a PDF file and would need all the glyphs of the font to allow such editing. The fact though is that if you wish to edit text in a PDF file in Acrobat (or even, gulp, in Illustrator - a strict “no, no”) you in fact need to install that font on the system on which the editing is being done. These applications do
not use the embedded font for editing. Thus, for this purpose, fully embedding the font in the PDF file won't help you one iota.
I'd be very interested in any other valid use cases one would have for fully embedding a font in a PDF file. During my 31 years at Adobe, we never saw any such use case (other than some severely broken third party RIP or PDF workflow tool).
- Dov
lol)
Affinity)
