This would also be a good time to learn font management. You don't say how you manage fonts but I use a font manager called Font Agent Pro (Buko approved!). I removed every single font on the HD I could find except for those in the system>font folder and the Adobe required fonts (Library>Application Support>Adobe>Fonts>Reqrd). Be aware that MS Word or Office also installs a ton of fonts. Kill them or move them into a central font library. I then import into FAP and create libraries of specific type fonts. I also create client sets.

Can you please take me off your email list

Sent from my iPhone

Does Flash automatically use ligatures? Perhaps you can switch that off somewhere -- that will solve 'fi' / /'fl' / 'ff' problems.

Thanks for a helpful answer, Dov.  I don't recall this being an issue for me prior to CS4, but it has plagued me several times recently with fonts as ubiquitous as Arial Narrow.  So it affects much more than this random Thai font mentioned earlier, and it isn't necessarily related to fonts that crash the system.

It would have been really helpful if, when we performed the upgrade from CS3 to CS4, Adobe had cautioned us by saying something like this: "Because we respect and uphold the intellectual property rights of font creators, you'll find you're no longer able to embed copyright-restricted fonts using your Adobe software. Following is a list of fonts on your computer that will be restricted, and a list of those that are fully compatible with all Adobe licensing agreements. ..."

To clarify, I work within a government agency. Sometimes I'm asked to convert docs to PDF that have been prepared by others in MS Word, Excel and other programs. There is no unlicensed software, fonts or otherwise, on any of our state-managed computers. I find frequently now (with the CS4 Creative Suite) that I'm unable to edit a font chosen by others, approved through a fairly exhaustive administrative process, and printed to Acrobat.

This is not to blame Adobe, as I believe I understand the licensing issue from your perspective. Yet I also know the frustration of being treated like a virtual thief when in fact I'm just doing my job, producing documents in good faith and knowing full well that the originators of those documents are licensed (as I am) to use the specified fonts. We've paid for these fonts many times over as we upgraded our software installations through the years.

I suspect that the only answer in InDesign is to substitute an unrestricted font, details of which are explained earlier in this thread. But for those of you who've shared my pain and find this thread as I did, here's a solution I've discovered in editing with the full version of Acrobat 9: Using the "TouchUp Text Tool" (Tools > Advanced Editing > TouchUp Text Tool), select the uneditable text and change the font in the Properties dialog to one that passes muster with the licensing restrictions. Save. Lather, rinse, repeat. This will keep you from tearing your hair out with the thought that you must go back to change it all in the source document and create the PDF all over again (not a big deal with many docs, but a real pain with a complex form like the ones I've recently created).

I suppose this is slightly off-topic in an InDesign thread, but maybe useful to some of you. For my part, anyway, the end product of an InDesign project is almost always a PDF that goes to a commercial job printer.

I hope this helps someone ...

Jeff

i Jeff,

I think that your lack of technical comprehension of what's going on "underneath the hood" is causing you to conflate technical problems with legal ones.

I don't recall this being an issue for me prior to CS4, but it has plagued me several times recently with fonts as ubiquitous as Arial Narrow.

Well, you're certainly free to embed Arial Narrow, so what you're being plagued by here is not so much unembeddable fonts as a lack of understanding of what's going on when a font is embedded. Forgive me if I talk down to you at all; I don't mean to, I just want to make sure that I cover all of the background without leaving anything out, or glossing over a critical technical issue. (Y'all regulars feel free to correct me if I'm getting any of this wrong.)

I suspect that the only answer in InDesign is to substitute an unrestricted font, details of which are explained earlier in this thread. But for those of you who've shared my pain and find this thread as I did, here's a solution I've discovered in editing with the full version of Acrobat 9: Using the "TouchUp Text Tool" (Tools > Advanced Editing > TouchUp Text Tool), select the uneditable text and change the font in the Properties dialog to one that passes muster with the licensing restrictions. Save. Lather, rinse, repeat. This will keep you from tearing your hair out with the thought that you must go back to change it all in the source document and create the PDF all over again (not a big deal with many docs, but a real pain with a complex form like the ones I've recently created).

When you make a PDF from InDesign with a perfectly legitimate font that permits embedding, it's possible to either a) store the entire font in the PDF, or b) store only the characters that are used from the font in the PDF. This second option is called "subsetting" - you're embedding a subset of the font, not the whole thing. "Subset fonts when percentage of characters used is less than XX%." You'll find this control in the "Advanced" section of the Export PDF dialog.So, if you use 80% of the characters in a font, and have subsetting set to 50%, then InDesign will embed the whole font.

So, assuming that you're trying to edit text in a PDF in a font which was not subsetted, then why in the world would it give you that error message? My assumption is that it would be because of the encoding of that font. Many fonts, when embedded in a PDF, have their encoding changed, for reasons that I really don't completely understand myself. You can imagine, I'm sure - thing about a font with thousands of glyphs, like a Chinese font, and then make a Chinese PDF. The font will be subsetted, because there's no point in storing all ~6000 glyphs of a Chinese font in a PDF that's only a page long with a filesize of 50k. So, the PDF libraries will re-encode a subsetted version of the font, but since it's re-encoded, the font no longer matches what I have installed and is therefore not editable in Acrobat anymore. Try opening up a PDF and going to its Properties (control-D) and looking at the Fonts tab. You can have Helvetica installed on your computer, but since the PDF engine can re-encode fonts on the fly, the Helvetica in the PDF (CID encoding, or something similar) doesn't match the Helvetica on my hard drive, so I can't edit that text in Acrobat at all.

I hope this helps you. For what it's worth, you should search Arial Narrow on these forums and apply the appropriate update, because I'm 99% certain that any Arial Narrow-related issues you are experiencing have nothing whatsoever to do with this particular conversation. It sounds like you're confusing fonts missing from your computer that are used in ID documents (like Arial Narrow) with fonts that can't be embedded due to mistakes in font production (like Thonburi).

I found all three of these responses helpful, each in its own way. Thanks to you all for your thoughtful and thorough replies -- and for not abusing me too badly although I may have deserved it!

Jeff

>Anyone finds a way to strip the font of the embedding restrictions, let me know!

LOTS of ways, but by its very definition this is illegal. The font restrictins are not anything like a preference, to be altered by the end-user. It's like gravity: not just a tip, it's the Law. You could make an analogy with locks on doors, if you like.

>I have a bunch of clients (or other designers) that just download fonts off the intertubes willy nilly and use them.

Then I have to clean up their mess.

Yeah, I've been there. I can't recall if I've ever Did The Illegal Deed; patiently refusing to use such fonts worked so far (even if it had to be communicated all the way back to the original author, through six or seven layers of intermediate clients, editors, and publishers).