Fully Embedding True Type Fonts into PDFs

Question

I am having problems creating PDF documents with fully embedded True Type fonts. I am printing from MS Word (and Indesign) to the Adobe 9.0 print driver. I can get .otf fonts to embed with no problem, but .ttf files will not embed. Is it possible to fully (not subset) embed these fonts? I am specifically having problems using WingDings. With other fonts, I have been able to find and purchase .otf versions and use those, but it does not appear that wingdings is available in this format and I do not know of another way to fully embed bullets (both sqaure and round).

Answer 1

The license for WingDings doesn't appear to allow you to fully embed them -- or too look at it another way, Acrobat doesn't appear to believe that it can fully embed them (and so subsets them instead). I'm not a copyright lawyer, so I'm not sure precisely what's allowed here, but here's some info that might help.

Install the font properties extension from Microsoft. This will give you much more information on the fonts properties. Once it's installed right-click on a WingDings font and and click on the 'Embedding' tab. You'll see this message:

"Embeddability for this font: Editable embedding allowed.

Editable embedding allowed: fonts may be embedded in documents, but must only be installed temporarily on the remote system."

Then read this article from Adobe about Embedding Permissions. And this forum discussion might be of some use too.

I tried print a Word document which included WingDings to the Adobe PDF printer driver (Acrobat 8) and not matter which settings I tried, I was unable to get it to fully embed the font.

My guess is that Adobe interpret "Editable embedding allowed" to mean that you can only embed characters for the font which were included in the original document (i.e. embedded subset) and they are also the only ones which you can edit in the PDF.