After receiving J. Miner's comments on this issue, I investigated the matter further. Here are my results. The Book Manufacturers Institute has a web site (www.bmibook.org) listing its members. The members' web sites are accessible thru BMI's web site. I recently visited all of those sites. Many--not all--of the members' sites have online guidance re prepress preparation. The following comments about the use of TrueType fonts come from those sites or from personal e-mails to me from representatives of those companies:
1. From R. R. Donnelley (www.rrdonnelley.com): "Consult with your RR Donnelley representative before using True Type fonts or system fonts in a document." 2. From Maple-Vail Book Manufacturing Group (in a personal e-mail to me): "We prefer for our fonts to be Postscript, but... we can handle TrueType but only if they are embedded; TT font used to drop out of the files when we ripped the files. It's just safer with Postscript fonts." 3. From Lake Book (in a personal e-mail to me): "True Type fonts can be used but may not give you the best reproduction." 4. From Versa Press (http://www.versapress.com/Pages/FilePrep.asp): "Of the two common font types used for page layout, Type 1 fonts should always be used because TrueType may not render correctly at high resolution output. " 5. From Walsworth Publishing Co. (http://www.walsworthprinting.com/walswrth.nsf/AppGuide?OpenForm): "We recommend using Postscript fonts for your applications. TrueType fonts can be used, but may result in unexpected or poor imaging. " 6. From Courier (in a personal e-mail to me): "There is no STANDARD for a true type library, per say. [...] Because True Type fonts are as wide as the ocean, we recommend people go to a standard i.e....Postscript TYPE1 fonts like the Adobe libraries." These comments agree with Thomson-Shore's (another book manufacturer) statement to avoid the use of TrueType fonts. Book manufacturers clearly prefer PostScript fonts. They work with fonts/commercial printing far more than I. If they tell me to avoid the use of TrueType fonts, then I am going to listen to them. They want a successful end product just as I do. I do not want to begin my relationship with them by ignoring their advice re fonts, which as one site says, cause more problems than any other issue they face. jwminer wrote: > > wtb41 wrote: >> Some (most?) commercial printers (book manufacturers) will NOT >> accept >> TrueType fonts. For example: >> >> 1. Chapter 9 of Robin Williams' book "How to Boss Your Fonts Around" >> says, >> "Service bureaus use high-end PostScript imagesetters to 'image' >> (print, >> output) the pages. The TrueType tecnology disagrees with these >> imagesetters, >> and service bureaus generally prefer (many adamantly insist) that >> you not >> bring TrueType into their shops in your documents." She has more to >> say >> about the topic, but that quote should give you the gist of the >> topic. >> 2. Thomson-Shore's web site >> <http://www.tshore.com/Portals/57ad7180-c5e7-49f5-b282-c6475cdb7ee7/Guideline >> OutputReadyFilesv10_6-06.pdf> on Prepublication Guidelines says, >> among other >> things, "Avoid using TrueType fonts." > > According to Amazon.com, the publication date of Robin Williams's > book is *1998*. That's back in the Dark Ages as far as publishing > and service bureaus are concerned. PostScript imagesetters today are > fully capable of handling TrueType fonts. Not all service bureaus > have modern equipment, though, so this is certainly something you > should check out with the output service you plan to use. > > As for Thomson-Shore, the document covers a wide range of > prospective users. The entire paragraph from which you quoted reads: > "Avoid using TrueType fonts. Although most output devices can now > work with TrueType fonts as long as they are embedded in the output > file, there are still some drawbacks of using TrueType fonts. > Acrobat 4.x and above will honor licensing restrictions built into > some TrueType fonts and may not allow them to be embedded in the > file." > > People familiar with TrueType fonts know this; others may not. > Hence, the blanket recommendation to avoid TrueType fonts. This is > obviously not a hard-and-fast rule because on page 4, the document > states under PostScript Conversion: > "Include all downloadable fonts within the PostScript file whenever > possible. (This creates a much larger PostScript file but having the > font information built-in helps to ensure that the file will run > trouble free.) TrueType fonts may only be used if they are included > in the PostScript files, ensure that your driver setup is configured > to include TrueType fonts." > > The Client Guidelines also state: > "The industry as well as Thomson-Shore recommends that Acrobat > Distiller creates the PDF file." Yet we want to submit a file > created in Scribus, and we can't create it with Distiller if we're > using Linux. It's the quality of the PDF file that matters and > service bureaus and printers specify Distiller because it's a known > quantity. > --Judy Miner > > Registered Linux User #397786 > > _______________________________________________ > Scribus mailing list > Scribus at nashi.altmuehlnet.de > http://nashi.altmuehlnet.de/mailman/listinfo/scribus > -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Truetype-and-opentype-fonts-tf2722975.html#a7881254 Sent from the Scribus mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
