Re: [pdf-devel] First post to GNU PDF list..

[Leonard Rosenthol]

On 1/18/08 7:03 AM, "Russell N Hyer" <address@hidden> wrote:
> Firstly, I believe that PDFs should be minimal (or MINIM in my
> syntax). Now, of course, this seems slightly obvious to many people,
> but what I mean is that PDFs exist in an interpreted environment, and
> because most of the time we are talking about using standard English
> (or USian) fonts - then we can simply inherit from the OS or the
> interpreter.
>
    A PDF viewer/reader is not required to carry ANY fonts along with it -
so that any PDF for which fonts are not embedded must (as you note) be
rendered using whatever fonts may be available on the viewing device.  While
that may be OK for Linux, Windows or Mac OS X systems, it isn't very helpful
on small devices (PDAs, cell phones, etc.) nor on hardware (like printer
RIPs).  

    This is why all international standards such as PDF/X, PDF/A and PDF/E
all require that fonts be embedded - which is also the standard
recommendation from Adobe.


> Interestingly Adobe Acrobat have started (recently) using a similar
> feature which also enables you to have document attachments!
>
    File Attachments have been part of PDF since 1.3 (Acrobat 4).


Leonard
-- 
Leonard Rosenthol
PDF Standards Evangelist
Adobe Systems, Inc.