CONGRATULATIONS on a helpful and informative article ("Ten Tips for Trouble-Free Printing," July '95, page 94). Hopefully, anyone who will be taking their files to a service bureau for output will read it first and take the advice to heart.
One of the most frequent problems that prevents us from running out a customer's file is when fonts used in placed graphics (from vector programs such as FreeHand or Illustrator) are not converted to paths or outlines and those fonts are not sent with the document. Whichever page-layout program a customer uses will not alert that person to the presence of a font in a placed EPS graphic, and if we don't have that particular font available, the graphic will print with Courier instead.
It's just good practice to convert all fonts within a graphic to outlines or paths before placing them in a page-layout program. No fonts, no problems.
Tricia Summers
TriciaS@pub01.halcyon.com
I WAS DISTURBED by the suggestion that whenever you send a job to a service bureau, you should send all the bitmapped and outline fonts with the job. I was under the impression that this practice was illegal and still considered software piracy, something I'm sure you don't advocate.
If font vendors haven't changed their policy on the sharing of fonts, then you should not be encouraging people to break the law, whether it's being enforced or not.
Tom Simmons
tsimmons@aol.com
/ You're right. There are two issues at work: licensing and piracy. Each font foundry has its own licensing regulations. For instance, the license that comes with Adobe font packages allows you to send only the bitmap font (which may contain unique kerning information) to the service bureau. You can send the accompanying outline font with the document as long as the service bureau has also purchased the font -- a smart idea, since your service bureau may have a more recent version of the font than you have. To ensure that service bureaus have plenty on hand, Adobe sells fonts to service bureaus at a steep discount. That's an ideal licensing scenario. The reality is that you need your job to print right the first time, and sending fonts -- especially unusual ones -- along is a common practice. But that's how fonts are pirated and distributed illegally. It's your responsibility to make sure any fonts you send to a service bureau are deleted from its system after your job is run. But call your service bureau first to find out its policy, and don't do business with one that won't honor your requests.
