Embedding Fonts

[Willow]

The Situation:  I'm doing my layout in Open Office.  It's what I know, it's what I have, and it's working for what I'm trying to do.  It also exports documents to .pdf format.

The Problem:  Lulu says I have fonts that aren't embedded, that I need to embed them.  If I skip exporting and let Lulu do it, the formatting gets wrong.

More Problems:  I figured out how to do it for Adobe Acrobat... except I only have Adobe Acrobat reader, and the Open Office help files are empty.

So, Forgites, what do I do now?

[Eero Tuovinen]

Huh, I've never had to create a pdf with Open Office. Hopefully somebody else knows what to do.

With Word, which is of course dissimilar, there is an Acrobat plug-in that handles the job very much the same way Distiller would do it.

If everything else fails, PM me about converting the file into a Word document and distilling that. It's a pain in the ass as far as procedure goes, but I guess it's better than not distilling at all.

[Yokiboy]

Make sure that you're using fonts that allow embedding. You might want to install the freeware called "The Font Thing" so you can easily check the status of your fonts.

TTFN,

Yoki

[David Artman]

Linux or Windows?

[Willow]

Windows.

[David Artman]

Try PrimoPDF, then--it makes a PDF "printer" on your system, and has some nice extra controls (security, print permission,etc). It might be a more permissive distillation engine than the one rolled into OO. Of course, if you are using fonts which don't permit embedding (per above) you'll have to switch your book Styles to use free fonts.

An alternative solution to discuss with Lulu is sending them the font files, to be installed on their print server and activated when they run your book (I've done this in the past with larger, web-press print providers).

This is all assuming that your PDF settings are correct in OO; does it allow you to specify things like Font Subsetting--a percentage that you can specify; and if the glyphs used for a font are below that percentage, it only embeds the glyphs in use, for a file size reduction? You *might* have subsetting at too high of a percentage (I'd use 0%, to be sure every glyph is present).

I am surprised Lulu can't offer more direction: isn't it kind of their problem, if you have a "perfect" PDF for your local printer, but theirs requires something more than yours? For instance, one you distill, can you "deactivate" the fonts in your document (remove them from the Fonts folder, temporarily, and reboot) and print on your printer and it looks OK? If so, then it's definitely something wonky on their end of things.

I guess I have dealt with too many larger printers, who wouldn't leave me to wander the Internet to solve a problem with their process....
HTH;
David

[OnnoTasler]

Did you already try creating a Postcript file using the Adobe Postscript Printer driver?

The driver is available for free from Adobe, even though the download is a bit hidden: PostScript printer drivers for Windows (you need the "Adobe Universal PostScript Windows Driver Installer 1.0.6" in your operating systems language and the "PPD Files: Adobe").

Once you installed both, you simply "print" your document to the newly installed printer, which will create a Postscript file (.PS) instead of printing it on paper. Lulu should be able to convert those to PDF without further problems.

[Willow]

Hey Onno-

I tried that (after some digging, Lulu seems to suggest I do that too)- I printed my PDF through the Post Script driver, but I can't find the PS file- where would it have been sent?

[OnnoTasler]

but I can't find the PS file- where would it have been sent?

Yeah, that is a tough question - I never found it myself. But there should be some screen that asks you for the filename, if you write "c:\mygame.ps" instead of "mygame.ps", it should be at "c:\". At least that is what I did to circumvent the problem.

[btrc]

If none of these other tricks work, try making up a graphic in another program that includes a chunk of text in the desired font, and then save or export that graphic as an EPS file. Then embed the EPS file in your other document as a "hidden" image (put it behind something else). This might force embedding of the font with the output method you are using.

Greg Porter
BTRC games

[Eero Tuovinen]

The Adobe PDF printer saves to an impossibly convoluted file location related to the locations of Adobe software on your harddrive, which again depends on your version of Windows. I seem to remember that it's the location where the printer driver itself is located or something like that. I did figure it out once, but I've lost it long ago; I'd probably try saving the file with some unique name and then searching for it (if the computer doesn't have a humongous number of files, anyway). Alternatively, you could maybe install the printer and then define a suitable virtual port for the saving, to get that standard Windows file operation window. That's a bit technical, though.

[Willow]

Stymied by OpenOffice and Printer Drivers, I took another tack- I downloaded CutePDF, which I noticed Lulu recommended, and exported my files that way.  Perfect- the layout was the same, and Lulu uploaded them fine.

Many thanks to everyone who responded to help- I needed it!