[Scribus] Truetype and opentype fonts

[jwminer at accessvt.com]

wtb41 wrote:
> Some (most?) commercial printers (book manufacturers) will NOT
> accept
> TrueType fonts. For example:
>
> 1. Chapter 9 of Robin Williams' book "How to Boss Your Fonts Around"
> says,
> "Service bureaus use high-end PostScript imagesetters to 'image'
> (print,
> output) the pages. The TrueType tecnology disagrees with these
> imagesetters,
> and service bureaus generally prefer (many adamantly insist) that
> you not
> bring TrueType into their shops in your documents." She has more to
> say
> about the topic, but that quote should give you the gist of the
> topic.
> 2. Thomson-Shore's web site
> <http://www.tshore.com/Portals/57ad7180-c5e7-49f5-b282-c6475cdb7ee7/Guideline
> OutputReadyFilesv10_6-06.pdf> on Prepublication Guidelines says,
> among other
> things, "Avoid using TrueType fonts."

According to Amazon.com, the publication date of Robin Williams's
book is *1998*. That's back in the Dark Ages as far as publishing
and service bureaus are concerned. PostScript imagesetters today are
fully capable of handling TrueType fonts. Not all service bureaus
have modern equipment, though, so this is certainly something you
should check out with the output service you plan to use.

As for Thomson-Shore, the document covers a wide range of
prospective users. The entire paragraph from which you quoted reads:
"Avoid using TrueType fonts. Although most output devices can now
work with TrueType fonts as long as they are embedded in the output
file, there are still some drawbacks of using TrueType fonts.
Acrobat 4.x and above will honor licensing restrictions built into
some TrueType fonts and may not allow them to be embedded in the
file."

People familiar with TrueType fonts know this; others may not.
Hence, the blanket recommendation to avoid TrueType fonts. This is
obviously not a hard-and-fast rule because on page 4, the document
states under PostScript Conversion:
"Include all downloadable fonts within the PostScript file whenever
possible. (This creates a much larger PostScript file but having the
font information built-in helps to ensure that the file will run
trouble free.) TrueType fonts may only be used if they are included
in the PostScript files, ensure that your driver setup is configured
to include TrueType fonts."

The Client Guidelines also state:
"The industry as well as Thomson-Shore recommends that Acrobat
Distiller creates the PDF file." Yet we want to submit a file
created in Scribus, and we can't create it with Distiller if we're
using Linux. It's the quality of the PDF file that matters and
service bureaus and printers specify Distiller because it's a known
quantity.
--Judy Miner

Registered Linux User #397786