Programming Techniques > Fonts and Font Handling > Making a Decision, Which Type of Font to Use

If you are developing for the Windows or Mac platforms only, and if you are sure that all receivers of created PDF documents (for example by e-mail) are using a Windows or Mac machine, and you are using only the basic three TT fonts which are installed by default on any Windows machine (i.e. Arial, Times New Roman, Courier New), then you can safely use TT fonts.
For Windows application development you can also use font substitution, in order to use TT fonts for the preview and printing and Base 14 fonts for PDF export.

If you are developing for the Windows or Mac platforms only, and if you are using other TT fonts, or if receivers of created PDF documents might be using other platforms than Windows or Mac machines, you can not assume that even the basic three Windows TT fonts are present on the receiver's machine. In this case you need to embed the TT fonts into the PDF document (which increases its size), or you use the Base 14 fonts.

If you are doing cross-platform development, e.g. your application shall run on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, you either better use the Base 14 fonts only, or you must make sure that the used TT fonts are present on each target machine (and platform) of your application, because for the creation of documents VPE requires to have access to the fonts. This might require that you license the fonts for distribution. In addition you should embed the TT fonts into created PDF documents.

Adobe recommends to embed TT fonts always into PDF documents.

The demo executables shipped with VPE are compiled for each supported platform, so they are using the Base 14 fonts only.