[Scribus] Legality of Font Embedding

[frank gaude']

Asif Lodhi wrote:

> Hi
>
> Someone has questioned the legality of embedding fonts in PDFs and 
> transporting those PDFs on other machines.  I am curious about the 
> same.  Any comments?
>
> Best regards
>
> Asif Lodhi

Well, being a long-time font designer myself I can tell you that a 
modern font design program like "FontLab 4.6" knows about the various 
states a font collection can be in, set by the original designer or 
company who owns the font. There's about five conditions, embed, embed 
but not permit editing, not permit embedding at all, etc.

Many font houses don't permit any embedding because a programmer can go 
in with the right tools and strip-out the code of the commercial font. 
Microsoft permits embedding in most of the fonts they distribute with 
Windows and on their web sites. Most other companies don't permit full 
embedding as far as I've seen from my years of work, since about 1979.

Lawyers will have much to say about font embedding.