> Vadim Rapp wrote:
>
> > I have a correspondent who sent me her word file where she used some
> > fancy font. I don't have this font, so I advised her to specify option
> > "embed truetype fonts" in tools/options/save. She did, and resent me the
> > file. When I opened it, Word displayed the following message: "This
> > document cannot be edited because it contains a read-only embedded
> > font". Tools/protect document is disabled; File/Save is disabled. I saw
> > MSKB article about this message in Powerpoint, but the solution there is
> > to resave the file - here it's disabled. What gives?
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Vadim Rapp
> >
>
> There is an "embedding flag" in fonts that specify what level of
> embedding the designer or type foundry allows. There are four levels:
>
> 1 - No embedding
>
> 2 - Read only - A document can be seen with the original font but you
> can't do anything with it, and as you've discovered, it makes the
> whole document read-only. You can copy and paste the content into
> another document, but it will NOT have any of the embedded fonts.
>
> A very user-antagonistic setting that's preferred by many major font
> foundries.
>
> 3 - Editable - A document can be edited; the results depend to some
> extent on whether the full font or a subset was embedded, I'm not sure
> exactly what happens in each instance.
>
> 4 - Installable - There are no restrictions, and an embedded font can
> be installed on the receiving system. At one time any embedded font
> in a Microsoft Word document would automatically get installed on the
> readers' machines if it wasn't already there. Now, however, this
> option is moot, because NO application provides a means for either
> extracting an embedded font or installing one.
>
> Your options then are to use fonts that satisfy the needs you're going
> to put them to. Unfortunately, it's not always clear before you
> acquire a font what its embedding options may be. You could also
> insure that all readers have the font - distributing or purchasing as
> indicated by the terms of the license agreement for the specific fonts
> (and of course they're all different!)
>
> You can determine the embedding characteristics of a truetype font
> with Microsoft's free font properties extension, available at:
>
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/TrueTypeProperty21.mspx>
> IF the font in question is freeware, shareware, or otherwise free of
> re-distribution restrictions, it's likely that its very restrictive
> embedding flag was an error on the part of the designer. There is a
> command-line utility available which will change a truetype font's
> embedding flag to "Installable". Its name is "embed.exe"
>
> - Character
>
>
>