Anybody... third post on unicode problem

[activa]

Scenario A:
1. open Textedit
2. start typing
3. select Greek Extended keyboard encoding
4. Textedit selects appropriate unicode font, e.g. Times for serif text,
Lucida Grande for sans text.

Scenario B:
1. open Word 2004 Mac
2. start typing
3. select Greek Extended keyboard encoding
4. Word selects some non-unicode font that does not have unicode subset
for selected keyboard encoding.

OS 10.4 Tiger can tell apps which font to use, but for some reason Word
messes this up. How does Word decide which font to use? How can I fix this?

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

Scenario A:
1. open Textedit
2. start typing
3. select Greek Extended keyboard encoding
4. Textedit selects appropriate unicode font, e.g. Times for serif text,
Lucida Grande for sans text.

Scenario B:
1. open Word 2004 Mac
2. start typing
3. select Greek Extended keyboard encoding
4. Word selects some non-unicode font that does not have unicode subset
for selected keyboard encoding.

OS 10.4 Tiger can tell apps which font to use, but for some reason Word
messes this up. How does Word decide which font to use? How can I fix this?

I'm not seeing exactly what you're seeing. I agree that Word 2004, unlike
TextEdit, does not make substitution decisions based on whether your
original font is serif or non-serif. But I also do not see it substituting
non-Unicode fonts. When I'm in Times New Roman - its default font and the
Microsoft font with most European Unicode characters available - it can do
alpha with oxia fine, so no substitution is made. If I type an alpha with
persipomeni it substitutes Lucida Grande, the Mac font with most Unicode
characters. It does not substitute a non-Unicode font. So please provide a
few examples. (I'm not familiar with Mozilla 5's Unicode capabilities, but
if you send your message from Entourage HTML you can even include real
examples and I'll be able to read them:

ά ᾶ

If you need to use a non-Microsoft Mac font like Lucida Grande for
characters that Microsoft fonts can't do, the font will be substituted again
in Word Windows, since it won't have your Mac font.

Word does seem to avoid using regular Times (also a Mac font, by the way:
Windows doesn't have it), preferring Lucida Grande when making a Mac font
substitution. And - this surprises me - Character Palette doesn't seem to be
aware of Times New Roman when the character is available there,. but Word
allows it if you type it and it has it.

Please give some examples.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

 

[activa]

Paul,

I'm not seeing exactly what you're seeing.

Thanks for the response. Neither did I until a few months ago--I think
it might have been the installation of Tiger.

As examples, I can tell you what fonts Word goes to when I toggle to the
Greek Extended keyboard encoding. When I did so, Word selected
PFGoudyInitials.ttf. So I removed that, and it selected
PFKonstantinople-Initials.ttf, which I also removed. It then selected
PFKonstantinople-Normal.ttf, which I removed. Now, it selects Minion Pro
Bold Ital, which has the Greek extended code points, but still seems
like a strange choice.

Brad

--

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

That's not too helpful as an example, because you haven't said what your
font is _before_ you switch to Greek (the actual name of the keyboard here
on my machine in Tiger OS 10.4.6).

Please describe exactly what your setup is, so I can try to replicate it.

1) To begin with, what Input Keyboard are you in? (US, or something else?)
2) To begin with, what font are you in?
3) To begin with, what style are you in? (Normal?)

4) Where are all these fonts that you removed (plus Minion) coming from? I
do not have any of them on my computer. Where exactly did you install them?
Which Fonts folder?

5) What do you mean by "removed"? Did you disable them in FontBook, or
physically remove them from their Fonts folder?

6) Just guessing here, but if you put all those fonts back in, then go to
FontBook, select "Classic Mac OS" collection and Edit/Disable it, do you
still see the problem? (Note: every time you update the OS or maybe Repair
Disk permissions, that setting gets enabled again, so you have to go back
and disable it. I just discovered this today.)

7) If you quit Word and other Office apps, go to
~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/ and remove both Office Font Cache (11) and
Word Font Substitutes (if you have that one: it might be only for Office X,
not 2004), and restart Word, do you get the same problem?

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

 

[activa]

Paul,

Thanks very much for trying to help.

1) To begin with, what Input Keyboard are you in? (US, or something else?)

Ok, I started word and opened a new document with the US keyboard
encoding on.

2) To begin with, what font are you in?

Times New Roman

3) To begin with, what style are you in? (Normal?)
Normal

4) Where are all these fonts that you removed (plus Minion) coming from? I

I could not tell you where I got these. I have lots of fonts, some from
designers, some from shareware sites. I can't think of any reason any of
these fonts in particular might be a problem.

do not have any of them on my computer. Where exactly did you install them?
Which Fonts folder?

HD > library > fonts

5) What do you mean by "removed"? Did you disable them in FontBook, or
physically remove them from their Fonts folder?

I had to physically remove them. They were still accessible from within
Word, even though they were not enabled. I removed them, and Word then
changed to Minion Pro Bold Italic.

In fact, I just re-installed them by double-clicking on them, which
installed them in the root font folder, and PFGoudy Initials is now the
font selected when I change from US to Greek keyboard encoding.

6) Just guessing here, but if you put all those fonts back in, then go to
FontBook, select "Classic Mac OS" collection and Edit/Disable it, do you
still see the problem? (Note: every time you update the OS or maybe Repair
Disk permissions, that setting gets enabled again, so you have to go back
and disable it. I just discovered this today.)

Yes, same problem.

7) If you quit Word and other Office apps, go to
~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/ and remove both Office Font Cache (11) and
Word Font Substitutes (if you have that one: it might be only for Office X,
not 2004), and restart Word, do you get the same problem?

Thanks, just tried that, same problem.

I just tried to send a screen grab showing that PFGoudy Initials is OFF
according to FontBook, and yet Word has selected it as the font to use
with the Greek Extended keyboard encoding, but the post was too large,
so I posted it here:

http://www.activadesign.com/unicode-in-word.png

Brad

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Brad:

I could not tell you where I got these. I have lots of fonts, some from
designers, some from shareware sites. I can't think of any reason any of
these fonts in particular might be a problem.

I can. It will probably turn out to be the source of the entire problem.

Word and the operating system make all sorts of decisions as to which font
to switch to, and which font to draw characters from, based upon the
properties encoded into the font by the font foundary that made it.

If this information is wrong, or badly coded, or inconsistent, then errors
just such as the ones you are talking about will be inevitable.

Fonts "Publish" various data about themselves, which the computer and Word
rely upon when making these choices.

I just tried to send a screen grab showing that PFGoudy Initials is OFF
according to FontBook, and yet Word has selected it as the font to use
with the Greek Extended keyboard encoding, but the post was too large,
so I posted it here:

How many font managers do you have active? Very strange results are
possible if you have more than one running.

Cheers
--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410