I've concluded that the bottom-line answer is this: it's safe enough.

Yes, anything can be hacked (and that can even be seen as consolation for using PDF:-), but the marketing advantage of PDF far outweighs the small potential "leak" - and don't forget that people who buy your fonts won't always keep them to themselves anyway - so PDF or no there will be some piracy.

As proof of sorts, note the number of high-end font houses that give out PDFs now: Adobe, FontBureau, virtually everybody. Also, there are ways of making PDFs even more secure, but I don't know much about that myself.

hhp

Jim,

What does your EULA say about embedding, and what permissions do you set in your fonts? If you tell your customers they can't embed your fonts then I'd say you shouldn't embed them yorself. If you allow embedding you don't really have anything to lose - except making life slightly easier for the hacker.

Cheers, Si

The only two things about converting to curves is that it makes the on-screen view pixelated (When is Adobe going to fix that? Can they?) and it makes the file size bigger.

Thanks for enlightening me to that view option in Acrobat, Thomas. I learn something new every day.

Even if it becomes a default in the next version of Acrobat, you'll have clients using older versions of Reader for many years to come.

That being said, the reasons it hasn't been a default yet are:

1) Performance issues, especially on older machines or with particular docs with elaborate vector art.

2) In some documents at some zoom levels, it can sometimes cause undesirable visual artifacts. Mostly with abutting areas of fill, sometimes involving transparency. We're trying to reduce that problem.

T

Go for it Jim.

Thomas: There's a view option in Acrobat called "smooth line art" that antialiases vector art.

The question is: When will Adobe turn that option on by default?