Font embedding
A user wrote to me privately with a question about Xara document font embedding, a feature new to version 5.
Font embedding makes it easy for a fellow Xara usr to view a Xara document in its native file format, which makes sending a file a lot smaller than pulling a PDF. Actually, the same rules apply to embedding fonts in a myfile.xar document as they do with Acrobat PDF files.
Your success depends on whether the typeface is "locked" or not. Most commercial typeface vendows prohibit font embedding to protect intellectual property from being reproduced, except as a printed copy of a design where the font is used.
Happily, the fonts that ship with Xara are not restricted, nor are most of the freeware and shareware typefaces you might find while surfing. It requires special font creation software to lock a typeface from being embedded.
Notice that the Xara documentation correctly states that users can embed a font so other users can preview the document accurately, print it, and additionall you can move, scale, and rotate a text object in a Xara file. What you might not be able to do, however, are:
1. Preview a document when a restricted ("locked") typeface was used. You really have no obvious way of telling that a font is locked until you share the file with someone else who doesn't have the typeface.
2. Xara Xtreme 4 and earlier users. The embedding option hadn't been created yet.
3. Add or edit the in-place text, when you need to add characters not used in the document. The screen cap below demonstrates what happens.
Lately, I've seen at MyFonts.com, that the "indies", small, talented font creation shops, have changed their EULAs to permit sometimes 3 to 10 licenses for the font you buy. This gets around the embedding problerm entirely; you're legally entitled to send a copy of the typeface to the commercial print house or your co-worker.
If this isn't the case, I'd recommend that you create a PDF to send out. PDFs retain a font's hinting and other outline information. If you've ever selected text, pressed Ctrl+Shift+S to convert it to editable shapes, and tried to print, for example, 6 point text? It looks bloated and hard to read because the typeface's special metrics and other information has een removed, but no so with a PDF version.
By the way, here's a very nice repository, virus-free (I've checked), and highly unusual free fronts live here, thanks to dieter Steffmann's skills and generosity.
Dieter Steffmanns's Font Repository
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