Font question

[drose25]

Here's one for all of you PDF publishers out there.... I'm finalizing my first PDF and I have just discovered that some of the fonts I had planned on using may not be usable due to licensing/royalty issues. Where do you get your fonts and how do you make sure their use is legitimate? Do you buy them from a major foundry like Adobe?

[madelf]

Bitstream is the only major font foundry I know of that includes the right to embed fonts in PDFs as part of the standard license (most of the others have it as an option at a higher fee - but I'm not a fan of paying more than I have to).

[drose25]

Actually, I was checking out Adobe's font license last night and they explicitly provide you can embed any of their fonts into an Acrobat file. Guess it would kind of being shooting themselves in the foot otherwise.

Is there a way to trace the lineage of a font? I have so many I have no clue where they came from or if they can be used.

[Apekid]

While I realize this doesn't help your current situation, this is the reason I stick with Adobe fonts. Less hassle.

[disPari]

Adobe Acrobat generally embed all fonts (if properly instructed to do so).
Unfortunately some fonts are specifically un-embeddable (there is an "instruction" inside the font file) so its not Adobe's fault if a .pdf fails to embed/display some fonts.

The easiest way is to prepare a sample check page with the fonts you intend to use and distill it to see if the fonts embed properly.

[bryceart]

Hi,
www.blambot.com has some really cool custom comic book and fantasy fonts.

Bryce

[madelf]

Adobe Acrobat generally embed all fonts (if properly instructed to do so).
Unfortunately some fonts are specifically un-embeddable (there is an "instruction" inside the font file) so its not Adobe's fault if a .pdf fails to embed/display some fonts.

The easiest way is to prepare a sample check page with the fonts you intend to use and distill it to see if the fonts embed properly.

And that has almost nothing to do with whether the font license allows embedding. The problem is that many fonts don't (legally) allow embedding even when it's possible to embed the font. So embedding it (though technically possible) is in violation of the font license.

[drose25]

Blambot does have some beautiful fonts, but I'm not sure their license will cover fantasy pdfs.

[JSpektr]

The only way to be sure is to buy the fonts and read the license. Never use any free fonts of any kind in a product you are selling.