How to embed fonts in an EPS file - and what is the exact definition of "embed"?

Question

My company created GraphPad Prism, a widely used program for scientists to analyze data and create technical graphs. Often, scientists will export graphs from GraphPad Prism for presentation in scientific journals. The format of most magazines these days is EPS, and we export EPS vector files. But fonts are a problem.

We offer the ability to "embed" fonts in an EPS file. By this we mean that the text is converted to outlines or glyphs. These EPS files can be opened on other computers for which there are no original fonts. But the people who produce the magazine cannot edit the text, change the font size, etc. when they work on these EPS files.

My programmers tell me that the term "embed fonts" means exactly what we do - convert it to outlines / glyphs.

People in the pagemaking company for many scientific journals use a different definition for embed. They want the text to remain as text in the EPS file, but to determine the fonts that should be included in the EPS file. Thus, they do not need the original fonts, but you can adjust the spelling, font size and even change the fonts when preparing the EPS image for publication.

My programmers tell me that the second definition of "embed" is a special Adobe method that is not available to us.

So my question is this: where can we find specifications or sample code so that we can embed fonts in an EPS file using the second definition (leave the text as text, and also include TrueType font definitions)?

Answer 1

"My programmers tell me that the term" embedding fonts "means exactly what we do - conversion to outlines / glyphs."

Your programmers, in my opinion, are wrong. In the printing industry, embedding fonts means embedding font data as a font, not a series of vector lines. There are good reasons for saving fonts; file size, rendering performance, character hint, dropout adjustment, etc.

"My programmers tell me that the second definition of" embed "is an Adobe method that is not available to us."

This is definitely not true and has not been since 1990. The PostScript Language Reference describes in detail how to create many types of fonts, the black and white book (I cannot remember the name from hand to hand) describes how to create type 1 fonts. Various technical notes from Adobe describe how to create fonts with types 2 (CFF) and CIDFonts with the contours of any of the previous types.

You can also use type 42 fonts, which are essentially TrueType outlines. They are not exactly the same as TrueType fonts, but they are very similar (the actual glyph descriptions are the same). It seems to me that this is what you want.

You can get an example of enabling a TrueType font by printing a document that uses TrueType fonts for a PostScript printer in FILE: under Windows, but you may find that the code is difficult to follow.

Type 42 fonts are described on page 346 of the third edition PLRM, "Section 8.4.2 Type 42 Fonts (TrueType)"

Learn more in Adobe Tech Note No. 5012, “Type 42 Font Format Specification.” This document (and many others) is available in PDF format from the Adobe website.