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First, a little explanation about Postscript.
Back in the early days of laser printers, in the '80s, Postscript appeared. It is actually a programming language for lasers that used math to describe vector fonts that allowed the explosion of desktop publishing to begin (as a programming geek, I have a book on it!). There are basically two types of fonts or graphics, vector and raster. A vector font is described using math or a formula, and as a result can be rendered at any size, from one point up to a size beyond imagination, and it will be the exact same design regardless. A raster is an image, and it may look fine at the resolution at which it was scanned or smaller, but when you start enlarging it, the quality of it falls off dramatically. You've all seen horribly pixelated examples of this, even if you didn't know what the technical details of it were.
One interesting thing about Postscript is the language would allow you to define a line that was one point wide and infinitely long! It would continue printing on that laser until the printer died, as long as you kept feeding it paper.
So, back to uneditable documents. And a little info on how PDFs work.
When you create a PDF, the font definition is embedded inside the PDF file. When you open that file on a computer other than the one that you created it on, your PDF reader program, which may or may not be Adobe Acrobat, says "This file contains Font X!" and looks to see if that font is loaded. If it is, then all is well and the font is loaded and the document continues processing for display. If Font X is not installed on the system, the PDF also contains information on Font X's "family", let's say that font is part of the Courier family, so the computer says to itself 'I don't have Font X, but I have lots of Courier fonts, so I'll grab one of those and continue rendering the document!'
The computer is happy and the document comes up on your screen, or gets spat out by your printer.
Now the problem. The earliest form of fonts in PDFs were Postscript, known as Type 1. And Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, has pulled the Type 1 fonts from Office 365 as of the middle of this month. This includes both Mac and Windows. Open Office had already pulled support. If you bought Postscript from a third party, you should still be good.
According to Adobe, from the article, "[the] PDF and EPS files with Type 1 fonts will continue to render properly, as long as those fonts are "placed for display or printing as graphic elements." That text will not be editable, however."
Also, "If you want to see what kinds of fonts you have installed on your system, Windows and macOS will show you that information with a little tweaking. In macOS, open the Font Book app and switch to List view and font formats will be listed under the "Format" column on the right. In Windows 10 or 11, open the legacy Control Panel, select Fonts, switch to Details view using the button in the upper-right corner, right-click the top row, and check the "Font Type" box. PostScript fonts can also be identified by their file extension if you can see it, typically either .pfb or .pfm."
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/08/microsoft-adobe-and-others-have-dropped-support-for-old-postscript-fonts/
Back in the early days of laser printers, in the '80s, Postscript appeared. It is actually a programming language for lasers that used math to describe vector fonts that allowed the explosion of desktop publishing to begin (as a programming geek, I have a book on it!). There are basically two types of fonts or graphics, vector and raster. A vector font is described using math or a formula, and as a result can be rendered at any size, from one point up to a size beyond imagination, and it will be the exact same design regardless. A raster is an image, and it may look fine at the resolution at which it was scanned or smaller, but when you start enlarging it, the quality of it falls off dramatically. You've all seen horribly pixelated examples of this, even if you didn't know what the technical details of it were.
One interesting thing about Postscript is the language would allow you to define a line that was one point wide and infinitely long! It would continue printing on that laser until the printer died, as long as you kept feeding it paper.
So, back to uneditable documents. And a little info on how PDFs work.
When you create a PDF, the font definition is embedded inside the PDF file. When you open that file on a computer other than the one that you created it on, your PDF reader program, which may or may not be Adobe Acrobat, says "This file contains Font X!" and looks to see if that font is loaded. If it is, then all is well and the font is loaded and the document continues processing for display. If Font X is not installed on the system, the PDF also contains information on Font X's "family", let's say that font is part of the Courier family, so the computer says to itself 'I don't have Font X, but I have lots of Courier fonts, so I'll grab one of those and continue rendering the document!'
The computer is happy and the document comes up on your screen, or gets spat out by your printer.
Now the problem. The earliest form of fonts in PDFs were Postscript, known as Type 1. And Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, has pulled the Type 1 fonts from Office 365 as of the middle of this month. This includes both Mac and Windows. Open Office had already pulled support. If you bought Postscript from a third party, you should still be good.
According to Adobe, from the article, "[the] PDF and EPS files with Type 1 fonts will continue to render properly, as long as those fonts are "placed for display or printing as graphic elements." That text will not be editable, however."
Also, "If you want to see what kinds of fonts you have installed on your system, Windows and macOS will show you that information with a little tweaking. In macOS, open the Font Book app and switch to List view and font formats will be listed under the "Format" column on the right. In Windows 10 or 11, open the legacy Control Panel, select Fonts, switch to Details view using the button in the upper-right corner, right-click the top row, and check the "Font Type" box. PostScript fonts can also be identified by their file extension if you can see it, typically either .pfb or .pfm."
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/08/microsoft-adobe-and-others-have-dropped-support-for-old-postscript-fonts/
