Potential Bug: Font Embedding Discrepancy

[David.P]

Hello Forum and PXE Team,

I would like to report a font handling issue that affects (at least) Stamps and Comment Text Boxes, leading to rendering failures in external viewers like Adobe Acrobat/Reader.

Symptoms:

Text in annotations (Stamps, Text Boxes, even when flattened to base content) created in PDF-XChange Editor does not display correctly in Adobe Acrobat (it gets substituted), even though the Document Properties in both applications list the fonts as "Embedded".

Investigation (see screenshot=attached sample PDF):

1. "Embedded: No" in Properties:
   While the global Document Properties claim the font is embedded, selecting the specific comment/stamp text and checking the Properties Pane explicitly states "Embedded: No". This contradiction could be why Acrobat fails to render the text.
   Scope: This happens with various fonts (e.g., Verdana Pro, Gill Sans) and affects both Stamps, standard Text Boxes and base content.
2. Missing Font Variants in UI:
   I also noticed that specific font weights (e.g., "Verdana Pro Cond Bold") are not explicitly listed in the Font Selection dropdown, despite being correctly installed in Windows. While this might be intended behavior to keep the menu clean, I wanted to point it out in case it relates to how the specific font data is accessed or recognized.

Conclusion:
The Editor seems to fail at actually embedding the font data into the annotation object, despite flagging the document as containing the font.

Environment:

• OS: Windows 11
• PDF-XChange Editor Version: 10.7.6 Build 404

I have attached a PDF example document illustrating the behavior and the conflicting property dialogs.

Thank you for looking into this,

Kind regards,
David.P
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PS: Update / Additional Testing:
I just performed a test to further isolate the issue.

I converted the document containing the problematic stamps to PDF/A.
Result: The resulting PDF/A file (see attachment) renders perfectly in Adobe Acrobat. Stamps, Text Boxes and base text display the correct custom font without any substitution.

Crucial Observation: When checking text objects in this new PDF/A file, the Text Properties pane now correctly reports "Embedded: Yes" (unlike the "Embedded: No" status in the original file).

This confirms that the font is technically embeddable and accessible to PDF-XChange Editor. It suggests that the standard saving process creates text streams that fail to bind the fonts correctly, whereas the strict PDF/A conversion successfully enforces the embedding.
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image.png

Font embedding issue.pdf

Font embedding issue - PDF-A.pdf

image(1).png

PDF/A conversion result

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, David.P

Thank you for the report, I have one question after reviewing your secondary notes here.

PS: Update / Additional Testing:
I just performed a test to further isolate the issue.

I converted the document containing the problematic stamps to PDF/A.
Result: The resulting PDF/A file (see attachment) renders perfectly in Adobe Acrobat. Stamps, Text Boxes and base text display the correct custom font without any substitution.

How were you "embedding" the fonts without saving a PDF/A in the first place?

• The Editor does not offer any font embedding beyond saving as PDF/A at the moment.
• Nor can newly created objects, such as stamps, utilize a font that is already embedded to the file.

So if "save as PDF/A" is not the method you used in the initial report to ensure a used font has been embedded, the outcome you observe here is currently expected. That instance of the text is not affiliated with any embedded data, and is expected to be entirely reliant on the locally available font package. Of which, "Verdana PRO Cond" is not a default - and would need to be installed locally on each system to display properly in either our software, or Acrobat.

Kind regards,