You create the data directory in the folder your sketch is in. However if you know where the ttf fonts are stored on your system it is easier just to enter the path (then you can pick and choose). See example below for my linux box.

Thanks for the speedy reply. I am using the Windows version and I tried this, but it only selected the correct font for the graphics window, just as before. The PDF still contains no font information. A-r-r-r-r-g-g-g-g-g-h-h-h-h! I need a way to embed the fonts into the PDF. Does anyone know how to do that? Once I can do this, doing everything else is trivial.

Indeed, the PDF doesn't embed the font, and the PDF reference doesn't tell it should do it...
At work, we use iText (the library generating the PDF) in Java2D mode (ie. drawing on a PDF surface instead of a classical Java2D / Swing surface) to generate a PDF, and we have a similar issue.
From my initial searches, we have to specify the directory where the fonts are, which is very annoying for a portable program (that must run on any system). In Processing, if the font is on the data folder, it might be easier. But you still have to mess with iText directly, which might be difficult from Processing (I haven't tried).

Yeah, the PDF Export library page doesn't tell you a whole lot. It is mostly very confusing. The code examples are somewhat inconsitent and there is no real reference material. Just examples. I set out to try the example code to see which example might work. I modified the first one and, to my surprise, it worked.

1. import processing.pdf.*;
   
   void setup() {
       size(400,    400, PDF,    "filename.pdf");
   }
   
   void draw()    {
       // Draw    something    good here
   
       PFont    f;
       textAlign(CENTER);
       f    =    createFont("Times New Roman",    40);
       textFont(f,    40);
       background(255);
       String message = "Times New Roman text along a curve";
      
       // The radius of a circle
       float r = 100;
       // Start in    the    center and draw    the    circle
       translate(width    /    2, height    /    2);
       noFill();
       stroke(0);
       ellipse(0, 0,    r*2, r*2);
   
       // We    must keep    track    of our position    along    the    curve
       float    arclength    =    0;
   
       // For every box
       for    (int i = 0;    i    <    message.length();    i++)
       {
           // Instead of    a    constant width,    we check the width of    each character.
           char currentChar = message.charAt(i);
           float    w    =    textWidth(currentChar);
   
           // Each    box    is centered    so we    move half    the    width
           arclength    += w/2;
           // Angle in    radians    is the arclength divided by    the    radius
           // Starting    on the left    side of    the    circle by    adding PI
           float    theta    =    PI + arclength / r;         
   
           pushMatrix();
           // Polar to    cartesian    coordinate conversion
           translate(r*cos(theta),    r*sin(theta));
           // Rotate    the    box
           rotate(theta+PI/2);    // rotation    is offset    by 90    degrees
           // Display the character
           fill(0);
           text(currentChar,0,0);
           popMatrix();
           // Move    halfway    again
           arclength    += w/2;
       }
   
       // Exit    the    program   
       println("Finished.");
       exit();
   }
   
   

Sort of.



I do get the selected font to display in the PDF now but it is still not embedded. I printed the output PDF to another PDF using NitroPDF and it embedded the font but it was the wrong font. So if I send it to say, a service provider, it may not print correctly. I tried different fonts but NitroPDF always embeds TrueType CourierNew, which I believe is the default font I was getting before. So problem still not entirely solved. I wonder how Acrobat is getting the font information if it is not embedded.

Yah, I think you're right. I tried everything available in Acrobat Pro and could not reveal the font. Ah well. Too bad. I am now trying out pycairo. It is much more of a PITA to install and write scripts for, but it has a much more mature, well-documented PDF output module. It does embed subsets of system fonts only, which is undesirable for sending to a service provider. I found a simple workaround for this. pycairo can also output to a PS (postscript) file that can be converted in GhostView (GhostScript GUI) to PDF. I set EmbedAllFonts to true and SubsetFonts to false and the PDF now contains full embedded fonts. Great.

Having had nothing but problems trying to install necessary dependencies for pycairo and other flavors of cairo, I considered what you said about the fonts being saved as stroked glyphs. That's it. I used a downloaded obscure font that no system is likely to have installed and then uploaded the resulting PDF to several mobile devices. The font showed beautifully and was fully scalable. So no need for embedded fonts. Problem eliminated.


Here's the PDF.

I don't understand how you did this one. Processing? iText? PyCairo? Something else? Any special incantation needed?

No incantation but it only works when the

moon (is) of the same shape and season as the day when they were written

LOL. Try the code above, the second one. The only difference is I commented out the ellipse this time and I substituted for the font

1.     f  =  createFont("../../fonts/tngani.ttf",  40);

I downloaded this font from TTFonts (one of those). Did you try the PDF? Did it look the same?

That's what I tried... (except I just put the TTF font in the data folder).

Aha, looking at my sketch, I see I made a beginner's error: I had the textFont() call before the beginRecord()! Moving it after do render the font in the file.
Sorry for the confusion. Glad you solved the problem yourself.

• Fonts Substitution
  Acrobat renders—on the fly—a “faux font” representation using typeface information included in the PDF.
• Fonts Embedding
  All typefaces necessary to render a font are embedded in the file.
• Fonts Subsetting
  Only the typeface characters necessary to render the file are embedded. Typefaces may have thousands of characters. Only embedding the actual characters used can reduce file size.

Interestingly enough, Adobe complains about the requirement of completely embedded fonts and adds:

There is no technical advantage to completely embedding fonts. There is nothing you can do with a PDF that has its fonts completely embedded that you cannot do with a subset file.

and:

Only older Type 1 and TrueType fonts can be completely embedded by Acrobat.

They go on to say that OpenType fonts are superior and that

Except for a few rare cases, Acrobat can only subset OpenType fonts.

I guess complete embedding would not be necessary, except in the case where someone might use the horrible Acrobat Pro text touch-up tool to alter some text. But why would a service provider do that? And yet I read at many online providers that complete embedding is highly recommended. Overkill for sure.

One more thing.

In an effort to solve a more serious problem-- Transparency and resolution problems with exported PDF, I read, with some amusement, in the PGraphicsPDF source code, that it is currently using iText 2.1.7 (latest version is 5.3.5), apparently to reduce sketch loading time by a few seconds whenever the code was written  , which instantiates an iText   PdfContentByte object and then uses a method, createGraphics, that was deprecated even back then, for text operations. Oddly enough, according to the documentation for this ancient version of iText, this method and other overloaded versions of it

Gets a Graphics2D to write on. The graphics are translated to PDF commands as shapes. No PDF fonts will appear.

So there you have it, straight from the horse’s mouth--yet a fourth PDF font option. Go figure. The Adobe people must still be reeling from this unexpected twist. LOL.

Sorry if I bored you but I like to be as thorough as possible. I’m hoping that this might provide some impetus toward updating the PDF library. Please?