f13.net forums - The "Please dear god I need tech help ASAP" thread, re: PDFs. For a good cause!

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April 26, 2024, 12:26:22 AM

we're back, baby

(Apologies in advance for clogging the forums with this, but I'm at the end of my rope. I've spent the past 12 hours trying to get this to work, but to no avail.)

So, a good friend of mine wrote a novel a year and a half or so back. She's hyper-critical of it, but it's really quite good! Anyways, she wrote it, sent me a copy in PDF format, and hasn't done anything with it since. She's flying cross-country to visit me for Hanukkah, and I'm trying to get a copy of her novel printed up all professional-like to give her as a Hanukkah gift.

12 hours of hell later, I have no idea how I'm going to make this work.

Lulu.com is one such service that does these things. It allows me to upload the PDF file and have that printed as a book. However, it requires that all the fonts for the PDF were embedded with the PDF; this file doesn't have 'em.

The fonts it's missing, specifically, are TimesNewRomanPSMT, TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT, and TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT. As best I can tell from googling, these are essentially the same thing as Times New Roman? I found a PDF editor, "Nitro PDF Editor", that can attach files to PDFs and recompile them, but I have no idea if 'attaching' the font files is the same thing as 'embedding' them. I also have no idea how to find the 'PSMT' version of TimesNewRoman, or if a standard copy of TimesNewRoman will work. Furthermore, the 'Fonts' folder on Windows Vista is locked down for some ungodly stupid reason, and so I can't even access my Fonts directory to upload them. A bunch of googling has not yet shown me a way to unlock my Fonts directory.

So, I spent about four hours trying to get things to work on Blurb.com's service instead. Except, Blurb doesn't allow the importing of PDFs, and the dozen or so free 'PDF to DOC' all produced results that were buggy crap, with random line indents and everything. So I'm guessing getting the PDF to work is my best bet.

So... What on earth can I do? The deadline for when I'd have to have the order submitted in order to get the product by Hanukkah is rapidly approaching. How do I get the fonts into the PDF after the fact? If this 3rd party program won't suffice, I'll get Adobe Acrobat if I have to. I just desperately want to know how I can solve this. Thanks in advance to anyone who knows how to un-FUBAR my situation and is willing to share. Heart

Kinkos does binding no? I've never tried to embed a font into a pdf that I didn't have the source for. I think if you open it with illustrator (and the font isn't on your comp) it will give you the no such font located on your system message and prompt you to choose a replacement font. Then you can recreate the pdf with that font embedded.

Or you can track down your local mom and pop print shop, most medium sized cities have a decent one. Most stuff is digital press now so you can get a 1 off bound copy, will probably be the most expensive route though.

If it was me i'd just have it printed full duplex on a decent laser printer and professionally bound.

that only helps if he is the one printing it, I doubt he can tell whatever fully automated online service he is uploading to that they need to use adobe 5.

Quote from: Salamok on December 08, 2008, 07:46:38 AM

They do binding, but not professional-looking book binding if I understand it correctly, more the spiral-bound 'meeting materials' kind of binding? Maybe I'm missing something. I'll try and check that out, though.

Quote from: Salamok on December 08, 2008, 07:57:22 AM

that only helps if he is the one printing it, I doubt he can tell whatever fully automated online service he is uploading to that they need to use adobe 5.

They won't even let me upload it until the fonts are embedded. :X

Quote from: Salamok on December 08, 2008, 07:57:22 AM

that only helps if he is the one printing it, I doubt he can tell whatever fully automated online service he is uploading to that they need to use adobe 5.

Newp, but hopefully it will install the fonts so he can distill or repackage it with it embedded.

Surely there's a place that does bookbindings in your area. Just open a phone book or do a google search.

From the site linked to from lulu.com's help:

Acrobat does not "want" to embed all fonts. This reflects a deliberate choice that has been made by Adobe. There is a set of "base" fonts that Adobe variously refers to as "built-in fonts," "device fonts" or "printer fonts." These are fonts that are standard in PostScript printers and are built-in to Adobe's Reader. Acrobat prefers not to embed any True Type font that is equivalent to an Adobe built-in font.
To embed all fonts, including built-in fonts, you must make a settings in the Adobe PDF PostScript driver and in the distiller that creates the PDF. The objective is to prevent font substitution.
Another issue concerns subsetting of font embeddings. The large extended character sets that come with many True Type fonts would consume a large amount of space in normal PDFs. Therefore, most True Type fonts are embedded as subsets in spite of Distiller settings. There are varying degrees of subsetting. A key concern for Lulu authors is that there be only a single embedding of each font in a PDF. This is especially true for fonts that are embedded as subsets.
The PDF creation mechanisms used by Acrobat are closely related to your computer's printing systems. There are a set of paper sizes that are defined which often do not include page sizes of books and custom book covers. You may need to define those page sizes to get the PDF size you want.

Really what you need is a kind soul who's at work right now with a copy of Adobe Acrobat Standard to embed these fonts for you. I could get a hold of a copy if nobody else here has it installed on their system.

Edit: Nevermind about all this! Another friend is a graphic design pro and has all the crazy book binding machines and whatnot, it'll work out fine and dandy. (She was shocked and horrified that I was going to print anything in Times New Roman, which along with Arial is apparently a sin against humanity)

All that text, just to help some guy get laid. Wow, the internet clearly rules. (Interesting read though, good job)

I think you should find out what your friend drinks and get her a case of it. After all she's gonna help you get rid of the no-booty christmas blues.