Why doesnt Acrobat Distiller embed all fonts fully?

Question

When I use Acrobat Distiller (v.9.1.3), it seems that I cannot embed all fonts -- at least not in the way I want to (no subsetting). One example is Wingdings (TrueType).

I activated the tickboxes and settings to "Always embed" and "No subsetting". If I check in a text editor the *.joboptions file that I saved as my custom Distiller profile it clearly says:

/EmbedAllFonts true
/EmbedOpenType true
/MaxSubsetPct 1
/SubsetFonts false

Some fonts Distiller does embed fully (as requested by me), others not. If I change the setting to do font subsetting, this works with all fonts. Therefore I think that my settings are correct.

Does anyone else experience the same problem/bug with Acrobat?

Answer 1

It's not a bug, it's a feature. ;-)

It so happens that yesterday I was wondering about the very same problem. I then resorted to the official PDF specification as published by Adobe. And there (adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/pdfs/PDFCreationSettings_v9.pdf#page=36) I read:

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"The following table identifies the types of fonts that you can (or cannot) embed or subset through Distiller settings.

Distiller control over embedding and subsetting fonts:

 ================== ==================== ============= =====================
 Font?              NeverEmbed?          AlwaysEmbed?  Subset?           
 ================== ==================== ============= =====================
 Type1              Yes                  Yes           Yes                  
 Type3              No (always embedded) -             No (always subsetted)
 TrueType (Type42)  Yes                  Yes           No (always subsetted)
 CIDFontType0       Yes                  Yes           No (always subsetted)
 CIDFontType1       No (always embedded) -             No (always subsetted)
 CIDFontType2       Yes                  Yes           No (always subsetted)
 OpenType           Yes                  Yes           Yes                  

For additional information on Type 1, Type 3, Type 42, and CID-keyed fonts, see Chapter 5, “Fonts,” in the PostScript Language Reference and Chapter 5 in the PDF Reference. You also can find additional documentation on fonts at the Acrobat Developer Center.
"Note: Distiller 5 and above also support OpenType fonts; Distiller 4 does not. OpenType fonts are based on the compact font format (CFF). For more information, see the Compact Font Format Specification at the Acrobat Developer Center."

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So this explains it all:

According to the official Adobe specification...

• ...Type3 and CIDFontType1 are always embedded, even if you set a fontname which happens to be one of these 2 fonttypes to "Don't embed" ;
• ...Type3, TrueType (Type42), CIDFontType0, CIDFontType1 and CIDFontType2 are always subset, even if you set a fontname which happens to be one of these 5 fonttype to "Don't subset".