Cannot print pages with some greek characters - no page printed at all!

M

MacWordXY

Cannot print some greek characters like gamma or kappa. If a
document contains such caracters, only previous pages are printed. No
error message is issued. This problem is 100% consistent.

System:
---
PowerMac G4/500 (AGP) with Apple Cinema Display (ACD) 22-inch
Word v.X 10.1.4 (Office 10.1.5) on Mac OS x 10.2.6.
Printer. Xerox DocuPrint N2125 Duplex (PostScript level 3) laser b/W.
---

So far I have found:

1.-Creating a PDF file sometimes fixes the problem. In the case of the
Greek letters kappa and gamma the PDF is created and printed OK. But
other times the PDF only partially fixes the problem because a warning
message is issued (example: "the font 'XKRCXS+Helvetica-Bold'
contains an invalid encoding. Some characters may not display") and
then some characters (like the euro ? do not print). Actually, creating a
PDF of a document containing the euro character may not issue any
warning, yet the PDF file does not show or print such euro character.
Sometimes the PDF cannot be generated at all.

2.-Shockingly, I have found that in the particular case in which I could
not properly print pages containing the Greek kappa or gamma
characters (or the pages after them) using Word 10.1.4 (same problem
with AppleWorks 6.2.7, Mellel 1.5.5, Nisus Writer Express 1.0, TextEdit
1.2 and TextWorks 3.1), yet BBEdit 7.04 printed "g" instead of the
Greek gamma and "k" instead of the Greek kappa. And surprisingly,
Mariner Write 3.5 did print that Greek characters fine.

All of this with the latest versions of all drivers, applications and
operating system (Mac OS X 10.2.6). Reinstalling the fonts did not
work.

Therefore it seems a problem of the applications instead of a problem
of the printer, yet then I cannot understand that other thousands or
millions of users would not be complaining about this problem, since
almost everybody uses Word these days.

I am puzzled. Any feedback most welcome.
 
A

Alan Wood

Cannot print some greek characters like gamma or kappa. If a
document contains such caracters, only previous pages are printed. No
error message is issued. This problem is 100% consistent.

2.-Shockingly, I have found that in the particular case in which I could
not properly print pages containing the Greek kappa or gamma
characters (or the pages after them) using Word 10.1.4 (same problem
with AppleWorks 6.2.7, Mellel 1.5.5, Nisus Writer Express 1.0, TextEdit
1.2 and TextWorks 3.1), yet BBEdit 7.04 printed "g" instead of the
Greek gamma and "k" instead of the Greek kappa. And surprisingly,
Mariner Write 3.5 did print that Greek characters fine.
------------------
At least part of your problem is down to Word's inability to display many
Unicode characters. It is basically limited to characters that were
supported by the left-to-right and CJK Language Kits for OS 9. These did
not include Greek. Under OS 9, Greek characters for technical use were
provided by the Symbol font.

With OS X 10, Apple replaced the old Symbol font with a new one that
contains the same characters, but in their Unicode positions, so that gamma
is now at code point 954, instead of 107 (the k position).

BBEdit printed a k when you expected kappa. BBEdit can only use one font
per document. It looks as though you used an OS 9 Symbol font to produce
your Greek letters.

Mellel, Nisus Writer Express and TextEdit all have good Unicode support. To
enter Greek letters in these programs, you can use a Unicode font such as
Lucida Grande, or the Unicode version of Symbol.

AppleWorks does not support Unicode. I don't think Mariner Write does
either.

You should try to avoid mixing programs and fonts that differ in their
Unicode support.
 
G

Guest

-----Original Message-----
Cannot print some greek characters like gamma or kappa. If a
document contains such caracters, only previous pages are printed. No
error message is issued. This problem is 100% consistent.

2.-Shockingly, I have found that in the particular case in which I could
not properly print pages containing the Greek kappa or gamma
characters (or the pages after them) using Word 10.1.4 (same problem
with AppleWorks 6.2.7, Mellel 1.5.5, Nisus Writer Express 1.0, TextEdit
1.2 and TextWorks 3.1), yet BBEdit 7.04 printed "g" instead of the
Greek gamma and "k" instead of the Greek kappa. And surprisingly,
Mariner Write 3.5 did print that Greek characters fine.
------------------
At least part of your problem is down to Word's inability to display many
Unicode characters. It is basically limited to characters that were
supported by the left-to-right and CJK Language Kits for OS 9. These did
not include Greek. Under OS 9, Greek characters for technical use were
provided by the Symbol font.

With OS X 10, Apple replaced the old Symbol font with a new one that
contains the same characters, but in their Unicode positions, so that gamma
is now at code point 954, instead of 107 (the k position).

BBEdit printed a k when you expected kappa. BBEdit can only use one font
per document. It looks as though you used an OS 9 Symbol font to produce
your Greek letters.

Mellel, Nisus Writer Express and TextEdit all have good Unicode support. To
enter Greek letters in these programs, you can use a Unicode font such as
Lucida Grande, or the Unicode version of Symbol.

AppleWorks does not support Unicode. I don't think Mariner Write does
either.

You should try to avoid mixing programs and fonts that differ in their
Unicode support.

--
Alan Wood
http://www.alanwood.net (Unicode, special characters, pesticide names)


.
Click to expand...
 
M

MacWordXY

Alan,

Thanks.

What amazes me is that it seems that nobody is having this problem.

1.-I just use Word with font Helvetica. When I need a Greek character I
use Symbol for such character. That is all. Yet does not print as
previously explained. Maybe I have too many fonts in too many system
folders (I have Mac OS 9,.2.2 and Mac OS X 10.2.6 on the same external
FireWire booting disk).

2.-Where should fonts live in Mac OS X? I have "Symbol" fonts in the
Mac OS 9 "System Folder/Fonts" and "Applications (Mac OS 9)
DeltaGraph/Equation Editor/Fonts"; and also in the Mac OS X "system/
Library/Fonts", ""Library/Application Support/Adobe/Fonts"

3.-Also amazing is that if instead of printing from Word I select Print
and then Save as PDF (from Word), then the PDF file is OK and I can
print the Greek characters OK.

Any ideas most welcome. Thanks.
 
A

Alan Wood

MacWordXY said:
2.-Where should fonts live in Mac OS X? I have "Symbol" fonts in the
Mac OS 9 "System Folder/Fonts" and "Applications (Mac OS 9)
DeltaGraph/Equation Editor/Fonts"; and also in the Mac OS X "system/
Library/Fonts", ""Library/Application Support/Adobe/Fonts"
Click to expand...
Your OS 9 version of Symbol should be in System Folder/Fonts. You should
use this version with Word v.X - this seems to have happened automatically.

Your OS X version of Symbol should be in System/Library/Fonts.

The other 2 Symbol fonts must have been installed during the installation of
various programs, so leave them alone.

The OS X version of Symbol will normally be used in preference to the OS 9
version.

I have a table showing some of the locations for fonts and their priorities
(I don't yet know how the Application Support font folders fit into this
system).

http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/fonts_macosx.html#intro
 
M

MacWordXY

Hi,

Here I am again.

Apparently I have my Symbol fonts on the right places. Maybe this issue of not printing pages with some Greek characters (and subsequent pages) is related to the one describe in my other post: "Word unexpectedly quits after copy, delete or paste".

Any idea most welcome. Thanks.
 
M

MacWordXY

After updating from Mac OS 10.2.6 to Mac OS X 10.2.8 the problem persists. Any help most welcome. Thanks.
 
M

MacWordXY

Hi,

Please, check also my other post ("Word unexpectedly quits after copy, delete or past") because I guess they might be connected, thus giving some light on this issue.

Thanks.
 

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