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Is it possible to embed fonts in a .cdf?


I am trying to use a special font with musical symbols in a .cdf that I send to some friends. The font is called "Tempera" and is freely distributed here:


http://christian.texier.pagespro-orange.fr/mididesi/free/index.htm#tempera



In the .cdf I use substitutions like this:


sub = "A" -> "\*StyleBox[\(\!\(\*StyleBox[\"A\",\n\
   FontFamily->\"Mathematica6\"]\)\!\(\*StyleBox[\"U\",\n\
   FontFamily->\"Tempera\",\nFontSize->18,\nFontWeight->\"Plain\"]\)\)]";

which are used in this manner:


 "A" //. sub

What this does is to change the regular "A" character into a curly A (from the Mathematica6 font) and a symbol that is a half-sharp (the "U" from the Tempera font). This works fine in Mathematica, and also in the .cdf on my computer. However, when I send it to my friend, he sees the "U" and not the half-flat. This is probably what you will see too, unless you download the Tempera font. I believe this means that Mathematica does not embed the font in the .cdf, and I'm wondering if there is any way to force the embedding to occur. While I could have my friend download the font, if I ever want to place the .cdf on the web, this would not be practical.



Answer




Mathematica will only let you use fonts installed on the system. I have two suggestions here:




  1. At the top of your CDF file, display a link depending on the operating system, pointing to the correct file for downloading the font


    link = If[$OperatingSystem == "Linux" || $OperatingSystem == "Windows", 
        Hyperlink["Download font for " <> $OperatingSystem , "http://christian.texier.pagespro-orange.fr/mididesi/free/media/tempera.zip"],
                Hyperlink["Download font for Mac", "http://christian.texier.pagespro-orange.fr/mididesi/free/media/electronica.sit"]
    ];
    link



  2. Alternatively, you can create PDFs for the single characters you use. Out of them, you can create a textual representation which can be saved within your CDF file:


    pdfA = Import["tempera_a.pdf"][[1]];
    symbolA = Compress[pdfA]

    with the outputs from Compress[] you can maybe create a list for the alphabet you use. When you want to use the font afterwards, you can do


    "A"/.{"A" -> Uncompress[symbolA]}


Edit: For the latter approach, I just noticed that Mathematica does have severe problems with embedded fonts - they are not showing up in the correct font. I guess using a raster format like PNG instead of PDF would work, but it's not as nice as scalable fonts from a PDF. If you use PNG however, the files will stay small enough to be included, even at a relatively high resolution. I checked this with a PNG file with resolution 1000px*1000px, where the file size was 60kib, compared to 300kb for the PDF file with the same character and embedded font.



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