Font availability

If you transfer PDF documents across computers or computer platforms, the fonts in the document may be in any of three conditions. They may be:

• Available as system fonts, i.e. the fonts in the PDF document are also installed on the computer where the PDF document is viewed
• Available as embedded fonts, which means that the fonts are included in the PDF document
• Not available, either in the document or on the system.

If the font is not available, it will have to be replaced by a font which is available on the recipient’s computer. This process is called “PDF font substitution”.