The summary indicates that embedding is allowed. Have you checked the Properties in Acrobat to verify that the font is embedded?

Yup - and your print is incorrect?

And the file prints correctly from InDesign...

Is Acrobat fully patched?

If it prints properly from another system, I would look at Acrobats configuration.

If it fails on multiple stations, I would think this needs to be taken up with the font vendor.

Can you share the file (PM my, click my avatar at your discretion, to send a private message)

There seems to be a problem with either the font SpudAFTatty.ttf or Acrobat's handling of it.

InDesign properly printed the file, and properly handled a placed pdf containing the font.

Acrobat 9.5.0 and Adobe Reader 8  failed to print the font at all. The first document used the SpudAFTatty font and SpudAFCrisp, in that order.

I created new documents with the SpudAFCrisp set before SpudAFTatty, SpudAFCrisp printed correctly, SpudAFTatty did not print and my Bizhub Pro 5500 with a Fiery RIP shot out an error log page.

From Acrobat's Print Dialog, Advanced features, I deselected Convert TrueType to Type1. The file then printed correctly.

I do not think there is reasonable expectation to relay this information to potential end users, service providers, and whomever with certainty; but that is the best fix I find.

I think I recall Dov Issacs (?) mentioning an update to this feature in AA 10; it could have been a different obscure Advanced feature however.

Edit - I hope there is no sensitive data in the screen shot, English is my only language.

PM Peter Spier or Bob Levine if this needs removal.

[screen capture deleted by request]

Message was edited by: Daniel Flavin

Nina, it has nothing to do with conversion of any kind.

"OpenType" is a wrapper name for two different sets of font outlines -- two that have been competing for years, now finally unified into a single type. Well, sort of, anyway ... (Imagine a single file format that "unifies" Illustrator and InDesign documents -- and the very first byte inside that file tells you if it "is" an InDesign document or Illustrator drawing. It's something like that. But user software should not be able to tell whether it got one type of font outlines or another, so from that point of view there "is" no difference.)

Between TrueType and Type 1 OpenType files there are lots of minor differences (internally, TrueType requires more data tables than Type 1 -- but, again, nothing you'd usually notice as a user), and one pretty major difference.

In a Type 1 font (a.k.a. "CFF", for "Compact Font Format") all characters are internally described by a simplified version of PostScript. In ye olden days, it meant that for every single character that got drawn, your trusty old PostScript printer simply reset a few values -- scale, transformations -- and "ran" the tiny PostScript program describing that single character. When it was done, the PS printer restored what values it changed and continued with the rest of the PostScript commands it encountered.

A TrueType font, on the other hand, does not really define "line here, curve there", but is more like a very small computer program which return a set of lines to be filled as "output". The major advantage over PS fonts was that this little program could be instructed to "round" values towards actual pixel coordinates, meaning that on a very small size, each of the defined points for lines and curves could 'snap' to the nearest pixel. That meant those fonts could be optimized for screen usage; on the other hand, when printing, this rounding is so infinitesimally small that it's virtually unnoticeable on a 600 dpi printer.

A similar "screen hinting" mechanism is also part of the CFF specifications, by the way, so for a well designed and hinted font you ought not to see any visual difference on screen.

There is a technical aspect involved as well; PostScript fonts use 3nd order Bezier curves (cubic), TrueType fonts use 2nd order Bezier curves (quadratics). Cubic Beziers can be converted to quadratics without any loss of precision, but not the other way around. Much like you can draw a rectangle out of triangles, but not the reverse

Usually there is no visible loss of quality after such a conversion (unless someone killed or mangled the different types of hinting, of course).

As Dov says, for any modern 21st century system, conversion should never be necessary. In the past, TrueType fonts had a bad reputation -- but current viewpoint on that is that was just because there were lots of sub-quality amateur TrueType fonts; most serious font foundries created their fonts as Type 1. It's a fair guess that was because the professional output devices of that time were in fact powered by PostScript. Which was, incidentally, the very foundation of Adobe's success.