[scribus] Fwd: Re: Font subset question

[Bert Driehuis]

Dear Benedek,

> I made the PDF/X-1a and this is included embedded fonts. The print house told, some font not visible or instead of visible a wrong character.
> I checked the PDF document a online PDF validator (https://www.pdf-online.com/osa/validate.aspx), and it is told:
>
> File    Dokumentum-2.pdf
> Compliance    pdf1.3
> Result    Document does not conform to PDF/A.
> Details
>
> Validating file "Dokumentum-2.pdf" for conformance level pdf1.3
> The glyph for character 96 in font 'AxeHandel' is missing.
> The glyph for character 221 in font 'AxeHandel' is missing.
> The document does not conform to the requested standard.
> The document contains fonts without embedded font programs or encoding information (CMAPs).
> The document does not conform to the PDF 1.3 standard.
> Done.

Apparently, the font AxeHandel is missing two glyphs. Scribus does not
appear to check the correctness of the font, but the validator does.
The validator does not make clear why it thinks the document is not
valid PDF/A, and as others have mentioned, the spec is ambiguous in
places.

There are many fonts with errors, even commercial fonts from large
font publishers can have the occasional error. Sometimes you can fix
the error with FontForge, but that is a very specialised tool that is
not recommended for casual use.

When you convert the font to outlines, the problematic code from the
fonts is removed so the external validator can no longer see font
errors. That will effectively paper over any error: if the PDF looks
okay to you, it will print okay. I actually use PDF 1.3 for most stuff
I send to a professional printer, and I usually outline all fonts.

I have downloaded Axe Handle from DaFont
(http://www.dafont.com/axehandel.font) and got a font dated July 23rd,
2013. It does appear to have a valid glyph for the backtick character
(96) and for Y acute (229), so maybe your problem goes away if you
update your font (and in the case of Windows, restart your computer;
for other OS'es restarting Scribus is usually enough to pick up
changed fonts).

As a side note, I do not recall you mentioning which version of
Scribus you use. In Scribus 1.5.3, the font handling has seen a lot of
changes that may (positively or negatively) impact your experience. If
you're using 1.4.6 or older, you may want to try upgrading; if you're
using 1.5.3, you may want to see if you can reproduce the problem with
1.4.6. Be aware that you can't use an older version of scribus to open
newer documents, so if you try upgrading scribus, please work on a
copy of your original document until you are sure you do not have to
revert to the older release.

With kind regards,

Bert