[scribus] Font in PDF does not match screen

[Nick Hasser]

D. R. Evans wrote:
> D. R. Evans said the following at 07/17/2009 05:37 PM :
> 
>> The basic font used for the text is LMRoman12 (from the Latin Modern
>> family). It looks fine on the screen and in the PDF. However, in a few
>> places I have some titles in LMRomans12 Italic. These render correctly on
>> the screen. However, in the generated PDF I see some sort of lightweight
>> sans typeface instead.
>>
>> I didn't see any warnings or anything when I generated the PDF.
>>
>> So I have a few questions:
>>
>> 1. Why does the PDF not contain the correct font?
>>
>> 2. How do I make the PDF contain the correct font?
>>
>> 3. Why wasn't some sort of error or warning thrown in my face to warn me
>> that the PDF wasn't going to look like the screen?
> 
> Hmmm... well, I've sorted it out, but it seems like there's a sizeable
> usability issue here.
> 
> Apparently Scribus doesn't embed all fonts by default. So the unwary user
> could all-too-easily generate a document that doesn't have the right fonts
> in it.
> 
> Worse, I would never have noticed this problem if I'd viewed the PDF only
> with okular -- everything looked great in okular; but in acroread, it
> didn't. Presumably, there's some setting on my system somewhere that tells
> okular to go out and find the non-embedded fonts on the system (which makes
> sense from okular's point of view). But that means that one doesn't realise
> that some of the fonts aren't embedded and that the document will render
> differently on someone else's system.
> 
> Acroread apparently doesn't go out and try to find the fonts and performs a
> font substitution instead. I'm glad it does, otherwise I would never have
> realised that my PDF was going to render differently on different systems.
> 
> The fix was obvious (just tell scribus to embed all fonts). But the fact
> that it was pure chance that I noticed the problem means that it would have
> been very easy to have circulated a PDF that would not have rendered
> properly on other people's systems. It seems to me like scribus shouldn't
> let this happen so easily.
> 
>   Doc
> 
A great example that we should always check our output before publishing...