Embed Fonts in Keynote=>PDF

The method used by the Mac operating system to create a PDF does not use font embedding.

To do what you want, you would need to use Adobe Acrobat.

Adobe.com Acrobat

jonathanshearman wrote:

I've created a Keynote presentation in the current version of the application, which uses two non-standard fonts, Chalkboard and Chalkduster. I have exported the presentation to PDF and put it on a web-server so other people can see it. But the fonts defaut to Helvetica or something, on machines which don't have those fonts installed.

When I did a test of this on my machine, the font was in fact embedded. Could you provide a link to your pdf so I can see what is going on?

Tom Gewecke wrote:

When I did a test of this on my machine, the font was in fact embedded. Could you provide a link to your pdf so I can see what is going on?

Fonts are not embedded when using the Keynote export function. Embedded fonts travel with the PDF document, so that a computer that does not have a font installed but is used in a PDF can be displayed. PDF's created by Mac OS X do not travel with the PDF, and these fonts will not be displayed.

If the document properties are shown in Adobe Reader on a computer that does not have the fonts installed that a PDF uses, the fonts used by the document are listed, but no embedded fonts will be listed.

Font embedding can only be achieved when using Adobe Acrobat.

Gary Scotland wrote:

Fonts are not embedded when using the Keynote export function.

But Adobe Reader tells me they are in the test I made.

jonathanshearman wrote:

In the end, I simply reformatted the presentation using standard fonts for the online version, which was an OK compromise, but the Chalkduster font in the original was a great look.

As I mentioned, I had no problem embedding these and am curious why it did not work for you. If you like, send me a copy of the pdf (tom at bluesky dot org).

jonathanshearman wrote:

if I create the PDF version and send it from my MacBook to the iMac, the fonts are embedded and do display OK. But, when I uploaded the PDF version (in which the movies were replaced with URLs) to the server via FTP, then the fonts wouldn't render properly in Firefox or Safari, when opened on the iMac. They would default to Arial, although with very odd spacing, which looked terrible.

When you are viewing on a Mac, in theory you shouldn't even need to embed the fonts, because all recent Mac's will have them installed. That it would fail like that when viewed in a browser from a server and the fonts are also embedded is doubly strange.

jonathanshearman wrote:

It gets stranger. I emailed the PDF to my Win 7 work notebook and it displays Chalkduster just fine even though that font is not installed on my work PC.

That indicates that the fonts are in fact embedded in the pdf.

I put my test on a server at

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/46870715/s/embedtest.pdf

and I assume it displays ok in your browser?

jonathanshearman wrote:

So what did you do, again, that I didn't?

I think the only thing I did differently was to use a different server and upload via drag/drop rather than ftp. But that shouldn't matter normally.

Do you use dropbox? If so, you could try putting your .pdf there and see if it makes a difference.