Prism Windows (but not Mac) offers two choices about how to handle fonts when exporting to EPS format.

The default choice is to choice saves the text into the EPS file as characters, with references to the fonts you used. If you have used only standard fonts, this format lets others edit the text, and change the font and size. The only drawback is that if the file is opened on a computer that does not have the exact fonts you used, another font will be used and the appearance can change drastically.

Prism Windows also offers an option to convert all text to outlines, so that each letter is described as a set of graphic objects without reference to any font file. Prism Mac always exports EPS in this format. The advantage of this approach is that the look of your graph or layout will be preserved on any computer, even one that does not have the fonts you used. The disadvantage is that the text no longer is encoded as text. That means it is impossible to opens the .eps file and edit the text, change the point size or switch to a different font.

Adobe products offer a third way to deal with fonts that combines the best of the two approaches above. The font definitions themselves are included in the file, so the text remains as text, but will render perfectly on any computer. As far as we can tell, this choice only works within Adobe products and Adobe has not provided the hooks our programmers would need to implement this approach.

Beware of the phrase embedding fonts, as it is not used consistently. Adobe uses it to describe the third approach listed above (including font definitions in the file). Prism 5 and earlier (and some other programs) use the phrase "embedding fonts" to mean the second choice above (converting fonts to outlines or glyphs).