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Embedding fonts in an exported PDF (Read 2074 times)

David Long Full Member Offline I love YaBB 1G - SP1! Posts: 153 Location: England Joined: Oct 23^rd, 2006	Embedding fonts in an exported PDF Jul 14^th, 2025 at 10:52am	Print Post
	The PDF files that I export from PdfExporter do not show the fonts correctly in MS Edge, but look good in Acrobat. An internet search suggests that the fonts should be embedded in the PDF file for them to be shown correctly in Edge. Is there an option or combination of options to do this? DavidL


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Slavcho YaBB Moderator Offline tech.support Posts: 3435 Joined: Oct 19^th, 2005	Re: Embedding fonts in an exported PDF Reply #1 - Jul 14^th, 2025 at 2:52pm	Print Post
	We might have done that deliberately, font files were usually copyrighted at the time we created PDF exporter... We'll have in mind an option for next release, in case you'd want to use it with free fonts (e.g. https://developers.google.com/fonts). Regards, Slavcho Mindfusion


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Slavcho YaBB Moderator Offline tech.support Posts: 3435 Joined: Oct 19^th, 2005	Re: Embedding fonts in an exported PDF Reply #2 - Jul 15^th, 2025 at 3:27pm	Print Post
	In our tests, Edge, Chrome and Firefox all display the fonts referenced from PDF as long as they are installed on the local system. Is there any specific font that's not working for you in that scenario? Regards, Slavcho Mindfusion


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David Long Full Member Offline I love YaBB 1G - SP1! Posts: 153 Location: England Joined: Oct 23^rd, 2006	Re: Embedding fonts in an exported PDF Reply #3 - Jul 18^th, 2025 at 5:52pm	Print Post
	Just testing with Edge, our default font, Segoe UI, does not work, and neither does Arial. Acrobat seems to read both files OK. The code we use to generate the files looks a bit like this... var pdf = new PdfExporter(); try { pdf.AutoDetectEncoding = false; pdf.DefaultEncoding = Encoding.Unicode; pdf.Export(FlowChart, dlg.FileName); } catch (Exception ex) { ErrorBox(Resources.String_WriteFileFailed + ex.Message); } Both Arial and Segoe UI seemed to be installed locally. DavidL


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Slavcho YaBB Moderator Offline tech.support Posts: 3435 Joined: Oct 19^th, 2005	Re: Embedding fonts in an exported PDF Reply #4 - Jul 21^st, 2025 at 9:25am	Print Post
	It seems to work without the encoding options, does this display correctly on your side? https://mindfusion.eu/_temp/test.pdf So maybe Edge cannot recognize whatever PDF values we add for encodings. Our developer will review that part. Regards, Slavcho Mindfusion


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David Long Full Member Offline I love YaBB 1G - SP1! Posts: 153 Location: England Joined: Oct 23^rd, 2006	Re: Embedding fonts in an exported PDF Reply #5 - Jul 21^st, 2025 at 10:30am	Print Post
	Yes, that file does display correctly, and our files now display correctly with those two lines of code removed. However, the font does look a bit strange. Our default font of Segoe UI Semibold looks like the attached file. If things could be improved, that would be great. DavidL

	Screenshot_2025-07-21_112629.png ( 12 KB \| 42 Downloads )
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Slavcho YaBB Moderator Offline tech.support Posts: 3435 Joined: Oct 19^th, 2005	Re: Embedding fonts in an exported PDF Reply #6 - Jul 22^nd, 2025 at 10:46am	Print Post
	Right, this one looks different in every browser, with Chrome version looking best. For time being maybe you could recommend it for online viewing, until we find more about how Edge renders PDFs: https://mindfusion.eu/_temp/test2.pdf Regards, Slavcho Mindfusion


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Slavcho YaBB Moderator Offline tech.support Posts: 3435 Joined: Oct 19^th, 2005	Re: Embedding fonts in an exported PDF Reply #7 - Jul 22^nd, 2025 at 6:09pm	Print Post
	It looks nice in Edge too if you open the edge://flags/ page, find the "New PDF Viewer" flag, and set that to Disabled. Regards, Slavcho Mindfusion


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David Long Full Member Offline I love YaBB 1G - SP1! Posts: 153 Location: England Joined: Oct 23^rd, 2006	Re: Embedding fonts in an exported PDF Reply #8 - Jul 23^rd, 2025 at 9:13am	Print Post
	That is an improvement, but we can't really ask customers to do that, especially as it says at the top of that page that you should't change these flags in a production environment. DavidL


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Slavcho YaBB Moderator Offline tech.support Posts: 3435 Joined: Oct 19^th, 2005	Re: Embedding fonts in an exported PDF Reply #9 - Jul 25^th, 2025 at 9:03am	Print Post
	We can't find any information on that new renderer, while old one is probably Chrome's PDFium. Our developers will try to implement font embedding after summer vacations to see if that fixes Edge's rendering. Meanwhile you might offer downloading the PDF for local viewing if server code is under your control and you detect Edge's user agent - add download attribute to the href or set Content-Disposition header for PDF files. Regards, Slavcho Mindfusion


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Slavcho YaBB Moderator Offline tech.support Posts: 3435 Joined: Oct 19^th, 2005	Re: Embedding fonts in an exported PDF Reply #10 - Jul 28^th, 2025 at 5:59am	Print Post
	Our developer's managed to fix the Edge rendering - https://www.nuget.org/packages/MindFusion.Diagramming/7.1.0-beta2 https://mindfusion.eu/_temp/test5.pdf PdfExporter adds an optional /XHeight entry to PDF font descriptors (apparently used only by Edge's new renderer), which is copied from otmsXHeight field of this structure - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/wingdi/ns-wingdi-outlinetext... and we've just discovered otmsXHeight is listed as 'Not supported' and the API fills it with a hard-coded 250 value that does not match Segoe's x height. The exporter now measures actual "x" string to find the height. Regarding embedding, we only find it feasible to embed the whole font file, which would add 1MB for Segoe UI Semibold to a PDF. Dedicated PDF generation libraries also do font subsetting (copy glyphs used for current PDF's text to keep it smaller), but that would require us to parse various complex font type files and generate back their subsets. If you'd need subsetting, we could expose some interface that PdfExporter calls and you'd implement using third party libraries for font manipulation (e.g. https://github.com/LayoutFarm/Typography might work). Regards, Slavcho Mindfusion


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David Long Full Member Offline I love YaBB 1G - SP1! Posts: 153 Location: England Joined: Oct 23^rd, 2006	Re: Embedding fonts in an exported PDF Reply #11 - Aug 4^th, 2025 at 10:03am	Print Post
	Many thanks, that looks a lot better. Sorry, I missed your reply - I don't set notifications for replies, as I have a feeling that feature no longer works. DavidL


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Slavcho YaBB Moderator Offline tech.support Posts: 3435 Joined: Oct 19^th, 2005	Re: Embedding fonts in an exported PDF Reply #12 - Feb 26^th, 2026 at 12:01pm	Print Post
	This version lets you embed font files - https://www.nuget.org/packages/MindFusion.Diagramming/7.2.0-alpha1 Code pdfExporter.EmbedFont = (fontName) => true; We can probably extract from font's metadata whether the font owner allows embedding it, but for time being leaving that to your discretion. Microsoft seem to allow embedding Segoe UI specifically, as in screenshot. Regards, Slavcho Mindfusion

	segoe.png ( 23 KB \| 4 Downloads )
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