I prepared a Word document with a mixture of Korean and English text, using two fonts.
- Source Han Serif KR (version 2.003)
- Source Han Serif KR Heavy (version 2.003)
Licence Agreement:
This Font Software is licensed under the SIL Open Font License, Version 1.1. This Font Software is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the SIL Open Font License for the specific language, permissions and limitations governing your use of this Font Software.
Licence URL: http://scripts.sil.org/OFL
Embedding licensing rights: Installable (no embedding restrictions)
No subsetting: Not activated
Bitmap embedding only: Not activated Furthermore, noting my previous experience with another font,
- the VendorID was specified as "ADBO" (not missing)
- high-level PANOSE data were specified
- Class was not specified (under Font Family Classification)
I got very different behaviour depending on how I tried to produce the PDF.
- Generate from the in-built PDF maker/exporter in Word 2013: fonts are bitmapped (all characters). It looks ugly when zoomed in (looks OK printed, though), and the text cannot be selected or searched.
- Generate by opening the DOCX file in PDF-XChange Editor 10.1.3.383, which uses the Office to PDF Converter: fonts are bitmapped (all characters), the same as when exporting from Word.
- Generate by printing to PDF-XChange [Printer] Lite 10.1.3: fonts are embedded as a subset, but only English text & punctuation is readable; Korean characters are correctly stored (and can be selected or searched), but Korean glyphs are corrupted/absent/invisible.
- Generate by printing to PrimoPDF 5.1.0.2: fonts are embedded, English & Korean text is perfect.
- 'standard' embedding
- force embedding of the relevant fonts in their entirety, without allowing subsetting.
- prevent the relevant fonts from being embedded at all
So there seem to be a few potential issues rolled up here:
- Possible problem with the font? I'm not convinced of it. This is a major font release from Adobe, is on its twelfth public release (and isn't a beta release), and I can't see any issues with the licence settings.
- Apparent problems with Word and Lite not respecting the permissive font licence settings.
- Apparent problems with Lite not respecting user directions regarding font embedding
- Apparent problems in Editor when using those particular fonts for Comments. It's unclear whether this is ultimately arising because of Editor or an underlying problem in the installed/embedded font. [BTW, if I have a font installed and a corrupted version of it embedded in the file, which would Editor use for rendering a fresh Comment?] Well, in any case it doesn't appear to be arising because of embedding in this case, because the same behaviour occurs if I reformat the Typewriter annotation with either Source Han Serif KR Light font or Source Han Sans KR Light font, for example, neither of which are embedded in the PDF file.