What is identity H?

[tonylondon]

So if you have to have editable fonts in PDF:
1. Distill from Xara and make PDF with Acrobat )
2. Use other fonts which are good when exporting from Xara )
3. Export from Xara as is, open in AI and just resave as PDF again )

Thank you for these suggestions. As the problem seems to involve most of the common fonts, and I don't always have the choice to myself, I'll avoid solution 2 but I'll investigate both the other two.

[Egg Bramhill]

Tony,

I see your issue re searching. It must be text if you want this feature.

The problem for me with this method is (I am assuming) that the text in the XX file is then no longer editable,

You've got 2 options:
Save the file, convert the text to shapes, export to PDF, undo text to shapes and save.
In the export dialogue window, there's a Convert Text to Shapes tick box.

One of the other problems with converting text to shapes is the "text" doesn't anti-alias so it can look odd at 100% viewing although it prints fine.

[tonylondon]

Thank you for these suggestions. As the problem seems to involve many of the common fonts, and I don't always have the choice to myself, I'll avoid solution 2 but I'll investigate both the other two.

I created a paragraph of text in four different fonts: Arial, Calibri, Lucida sans and Tahoma. Using the straight export from XX to PDF rendered all the fonts as identity-H. Using Print to PDF gave ansi coding for Arial, Lucida sans and tahoma and both ansi and identity-H for Calibri. Exporting from XX as AI/EPS and reading into AI created additional problems as Arial was interpreted as Helvetica, which I don't have on my computer. Saving or printing to PDF gave a mixture of identities: ansi, custom, identity-H and Roman, although Arial was reinstated.

So print to PDF seems the best option, with Egg's alternative for a back-up if a printer should complain

Thanks again to both of you for your suggestions,