Embedded font issues

[Emily Kilcer]

Dear all, 

I’m hoping to get some feedback on how folks are handling embedded fonts. 

While Harvard’s ETD submission requirements indicate that fonts need to be embedded for printing and preservation purposes, we are still receiving files that have font errors. As a workaround we started using a product that attempts to convert the student-uploaded ETDs into PDF/A, which includes a step to embed missing fonts and fix font errors. However, this isn’t working across the board.

Does your institution have similar issues? If so, how have you managed embedded font errors? Do you limit the fonts that students can use? Or have some other workaround? We would love to hear about your experiences with this. 

With thanks,

Emily

[James MacDonald]

We are just implementing our ETD program. We've made it a matter of policy that students must submit a PDF/a. We provide instructions on how to do that from a variety of software.

Also, we have implemented a PDF/a check at the upload form. There is an open source product available for verifying a file is a PDF/a. If it fails this check the student is unable to upload the file and receives an error specifying that the file does not meet the PDF/a specification.

We won't actually have this in live production until the end of the summer but it works beautifully in testing. If you are interested I can find out the name of the open source product for checking PDF/a compliance?

James

Sent from my iPhone

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[Y H]

PDF/A requires to embed all fonts as a self-contained package. So why this is not working across the board?  For more info, see http://www.pdfa.org/tag/pdfa-validation/ 

There is a beta version of PDF/A validator in release by the PDF association and Open Preservation foundation . http://openpreservation.org/about/projects/verapdf/ 

Yan

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[Emily Kilcer]

Dear all,

Thanks so much for the feedback thus far! 

I wanted to clarify my question a bit: Rather than having issues with validation we are running into problems when we try to correct the font errors. 

Have any of you encountered this sort of behavior?  

With thanks,

Emily 

[Y H]

You might not have the font in your system when you convert the PDF to the PDF/A, if I understand correctly your question. 

You can post a screen shot that help better understand the issues. 

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