Apple

converting text to paths is very easy... you just select it all and use the Type->Create Outlines command.
that way the recipient of your file doesn't need any fonts to print it. but by the other hand, he cannot edit the text anymore.
You need to switch to View->Preview to read the text now, because View->Artwork will show the paths that you made.

rendering outline fonts is not that intensive, it only took a few seconds to do each page on a 12 MHz LaserWriter back in the day. But I once printed a large graphic (4 letter size sheets vertically and 6 horizontally) and that took ages just to do the first page.

Since this is geo's question, I have to tell you what print shops in China do with Illustrator or Photoshop files. PDF, for that matter, too.

First you call to make sure the shop can work directly with Illustrator / PShop / PDF's. We just spent three days arguing over this layout, we want it printed exactly as delivered.

Sure, no problem.

So you take the artwork in. The first time, you're a fool and take them at their word. Yes, they look at the layout in Illustrator while you stand there. Mmm, okay, good. Print up one page, check the color. Okay fine.

You turn your back.

They take the artwork, import it into CorelDraw and redo everything. Redo everything wrong.

Living here is such an adventure. Okay. Next time you make them click the Start button and you check to see if CorelDraw is installed on their computer. If it is, you leave and go to the next print shop on the list.

You finally find a shop that doesn't have CorelDraw. Get through the color matching, check the proofs, everything looks fine.

Wrong. That was not their production computer. They put your files on a USB stick and took them down the hall to be altered beyond recognition.

The crowning glory of printshopdom was a few hundred brochures we had printed for a Saturday show. Checked, checked, triple checked everything, the first ten copies looked perfect, we'd pick them up on the way to the airport.

After all that, instead of just pushing the go button, for some godforsaken unfathomable reason the little weasel printer decided I didn't know how to spell so he "corrected" our name. Not some meaningless word on page five, our name. Front and center. Half an hour to make the plane and here's our brochures with our name in lovely 16 point type spelled wrong.

There is now a reasonably nice Xerox 7740 sitting ten feet to my left. I don't know shit about printing but I know more than they do.

Oh. I told this story to a friend who came over to do a conference. He's a bigshot and knows everything, like most American corporate types, so he laughed and said the company he was working with had their own people, knew what they were doing, very professional, bla bla bla. I smiled and nodded. Of course I don't know a fucking thing about China, I've only been working here nineteen years. Step aside, peon, only the corporates really know anything, you understand. They have MBA's.

He looked at the printed material right before his presentation ... it was totally butchered. Absolutely butchered. Couldn't make sense of any of it. Luckily for him, they also spelled his name entirely wrong, so he didn't have his reputation plastered all over that abortion

displaced? yes i've been there, but hell no, misspelled too?

haven't bumped into a corel-maniac recently, but some print folks love corel because it's able to do both vectors & bitmaps under the same roof. all fine and dandy if you give them a .cdr file. all hell brakes loose if you give them anything else because the translation from illy/ps et al funks up the margins every time.

few years ago, i was working on a story that turned into a pop-up book and decided to have some of the thick carton guides printed before i cut+sew by hand. went through all of the trouble to measure everything by the last mm, locked all the guides in my .ai file and sent it to a shop round the corner. the batch came out totally displaced and i ended up doing everything by hand.