curious font problem?

[grammatim]

I gave my first PowerPoint presentation this morning, and everything
went perfectly -- the projector projected as soon as the video cable
was connected to the borrowed computer, PowerPoint Viewer worked
perfectly -- except for one thing.

I was giving examples of different languages, so I checked the option
to Download Fonts when putting it on the CD, and the Russian and
Sanskrit appeared perfectly (both part of Arial) -- but the Ge`ez
(Ethiopic) showed up as boxes! I typed it using the Taveultesoft
keyboard add-on and its font called "Ge`ez Unicode," but then I
converted it to Arial Unicode and the letterforms were intact on my
screen and on my "Handout" reference copy (9 slides per page).

Howcome the Sanskrit font downloaded properly, but the Ge`ez didn't?

 

[PPTMagician]

From what I can find on the net, it appears this font is compatible with Word
but not PowerPoint.

 

[grammatim]

By "this font," do you mean something other than Arial Unicode? Are
the subsets of Arial considered "different fonts" for some reason?

 

[PPTMagician]

I meant the Ge`ez Unicode.
--
Thanks,
Glenna Shaw
Microsoft PowerPoint MVP Team
http://www.pptmagic.com

 

[Troy @ TLC]

I am not certain what is meant by 'converted to unicode'...

But in general unicode fonts cannot be embedded into a PPT, so the custom
Ge'ez did not travel with the presentation. The solution would be to copy
the actual font and install onto the viewing computer.

 

[Martin Conradi]

I recently ran a conference where one speaker used their own computer. I
loaded the fonts (Meta family) which this client has used used corporately
for years and even edited the presentation in this font - all in English,
all perfectly normal. But when the show started the presentation body text
(not the headlines) appeared in Greek script.

Can anyone tell me why?

Thanks.

Martin

 

[grammatim]

Sorry, I didn't come back for a few days because the problem is behind
me ... but it wasn't "a unicode font," it was Arial Unicode, which
came with Windows XP; and the other non-roman Arial characters I used,
including Russian and Sanskrit, showed up correctly.

 

[grammatim]

I didn't say "converted to unicode," I said "converted to Arial
Unicode," i.e. did a font change, after typing the text. Arial Unicode
is a font that comes with Windows XP Pro.

 

[grammatim]

It did NOT work!! That's why I'm asking my question.

If Arial Unicode comes with Office rather than Windows, that's all the
more reason it should work with an Office app.

 

[grammatim]

and I took "intact on my screen" to mean that it worked.

It worked on _my own_ computer, but not on the computer that was
hosting the presentation -- even though when I made the CD, I checked
the "Download all fonts" box.

It comes with Office but, as best I recall, is NOT part of a typical install.
In other words, there's no guarantee that it'll be present on the system.

I didn't expect it to be on the host computer. Any more than I
expected Sanskrit to be on the host computer!

 

[grammatim]

OK, let's start this over and clear up some details.


Do you mean the "Embedded fonts" checkbox? That would cause the Package for CD routine to put
copies of any embedded fonts on the CD, as I read it. In other words, if you haven't already saved
the presentation and elected to embed the fonts, it might not do anything.

To quote from *Special Edition Using Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003*
by Routledge, Grey, and Mucciolo, p. 194, "If your presentation uses
any fonts you're not positive are on the computer you'll use, click
the Embedded TrueType fonts box so that it contains a check mark.
PowerPoint packages the fonts so that your presentation is sure to
look the way you created it. CAUTION You can embed other TrueType
fonts that you install only if they aren't restricted by locense or
copyright. You'll receive an error message if you try to embed a
restricted font." I didn't get an error message (and Arial Unicode
comes with, as we've noted).

I haven't come across anything about saving a presentation in the
ordinary way that offered an option of embedding fonts, and it isn't
mentioned in the quoted paragraph, so that doesn't seem likely.

Cyrillic glyphs are included in the copy of Arial here but not Sanskrit.
Are you certain it wasn't Arial Unicode?

It WAS Arial Unicode. (By "here," do you mean the computer you're
using? If you haven't turned on the Sanskrit IME (in the Regional and
Language Options control panel), you probably won't see the Sanskrit
characters in a font display.)

How did you do the conversion?

Selected the whole line (which had Ge`ez characters and Arial roman
characters), so the box in the toolbar identifying the font was empty,
and chose Arial from the font menu; the Ge`ez characters changed shape
as the font changed, and selecting any one of them individually showed
Arial Unicode in the font identification box.

Character Map and the Insert Symbol function in PPT don't list Ethiopic for either Arial or Arial
Unicode. Perhaps they're missing it, but perhaps the characters are not really in the font and PPT
has mapped Arial/Arial Unicode back to a font that *does* have the characters. When you select some
of the Ethiopic text on your PC, does the formatting bar indicate that it's in Arial Unicode?

Yep. (Do CM and IS show characters you can't type because you haven't
installed the relevant IME? I think so, because Hebrew and Arabic
appear there -- though of course if you Insert Symbol them, the Arabic
letters don't combine into properly joined-up words.)

It worked on _my own_ computer, but not on the computer that was
hosting the presentation -- even though when I made the CD, I checked
the "Download all fonts" box.

I didn't expect it to be on the host computer. Any more than I
expected Sanskrit to be on the host computer!

 

[grammatim]

Sure does get confusing, doesn't it?

Only when you know _too much_! You've been dealing with PP for years,
I for, I guess, two weeks now.

I'm glad I can challenge you with a problem you probably haven't
encountered before! I imagine you mostly get the same hundred
questions over and over (which is why all those convenient url's are
available to solve them!)

vide infra

Fine. But that still doesn't answer the question.
There are TWO places where you can deal with fonts. We still don't know which you've chosen.

Yes you do. I've been telling you this happened when I packaged a
presentation onto a CD and used it in an alien computer, where
everything worked perfectly except the display of less than a dozen
characters. (That actually surprised me, because I've been to a number
of archeology talks where it took them 20 minutes to get it up and
running. Us linguists, though, usually still use paper handouts.)

1) In the Save dialog where you can CHOOSE to embed fonts or not. That's the one the quote above refers
to, I expect, but it's not clear.

No, why would I have quoted a passage to you for a process I never
engaged in?

2) In Package for CD, where you have an "Embedded TrueType Fonts" checkbox. Help is a bit vague on what
this does, exactly; it may also embed the fonts or just copy them to the CD. Probably the former.

Well, since it's labeld "Embedded" ...

File, Save As, click Tools, then Save Options. It's been around in one form or another longer than
Package for CD. Whether that's what the paragraph refers to or not, I've no idea ... can't say w/o
seeing it in context. And it doesn't really matter, because the question is which did YOU do.

Why would I even _want_ to do that, when I'm only using my own
computer? It seems like it would just make the file a lot bigger, for
no purpose. (Maybe it has to do with Web pages?)

It seems, then that you've chosen the second option, yes? In the Package for CD options dialog?
Yes.

My point is this: it can save a lot of confusion and back/forth messages if you describe exactly what
you've done in PPT's own terms. ex: "I chose File, Package for CD, then clicked Options and in the
Package for CD options dialog box, put a checkmark next to "Embedded Truetype Fonts".

That's what I said I did, even if I couldn't notate the exact steps
several days after doing it!

Make sense? Read on ... more comments intertwined below.



See below.




That's the thing ... on this particular computer (what I meant above by "here") I don't have any IME or
alternate language support installed, but CM and IS both show Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic and a
host of other languages' glyphs. I can only assume that if Arial Unicode includes the glyph, it should
appear in CM, at least. I don't entirely trust IS (it may show previously inserted symbols from some
font other than the currently selected one).

So to fill in the reply to your earlier question, I'd expect to see Sanskrit in CM, if it were included
in the set of glyphs supported by Arial Unicode. It doesn't here, but does it appear in your copy of
CM? What about the Ethiopic characters?

It surprised me that I could change the font from (the one that came
with the IME) to Arial Unicode, given that Ge`ez/Ethiopic/Amharic
isn't an IME available in XP Pro. (Amharic would be the most likely
name for it, since it's the national language of Ethiopia -- or it
might be called Tigrinya, for the national language of Eritrea that
uses the same script.)

Howcome the Sanskrit font downloaded properly, but the Ge`ez didn't?-

 

[grammatim]

That's why they call 'em Frequently Asked Questions, all right.
And yours certainly doesn't fall into that category.



If it were that clear I wouldn't keep asking for clarification. Consider: If it's not worth it to you to
retrace your steps and describe them precisely, why might the rest of us here try to work our way through
ALL the possible paths you might have followed?

But I didn't know any of the other paths existed! (Nor do I find any
metnion of any other font-embedding anywhere else in the manual.)

I've checked all three names; none is available in Insert Symbol, and none is available in Regional and
Language Options.

The only Unicode book I have is Version 1, and it wasn't included then
(and I don't know how to find stuff at the Unicode website).

I'd imagine that the Ethiopic IME may have extended the choices available to you, beyond just the add'l
fonts. PPT can and will sometimes use alternate fonts for certain characters even though the rest of the
text box is in a different font, and once it does that, it generally won't let you change the font easily.

That doesn't seem to apply.

Ethiopic script combines consonant and vowel and the combination often
involves a modified shape, not just adding a vowel to a consonant
letter as in Sanskrit.

In other words, it might be continuing to use the Ge`ez font for some glyphs even though you've changed the
contents of the text box to Arial Unicode.

The shapes of the characters changed on-screen.

I'd be interested to see a single slide that exhibits this problem; I might be able to dissect it a bit
better with it in front of me. If you can share one, email it to steve at-sign pptools dot com

How can I send you a single slide?

Include in the file a screenshot of what you're seeing on your computer so I can tell what it should look
like. To do this, go to the example slide in your presentation, press Alt+PrintScreen then press Ctrl+V to
paste in the image.

Hmm, a file that contains both a slide and a graphic?

 

[grammatim]

And again, that's why giving an exact description of the steps taken is important.
That a third party book doesn't mention what is the more usual way of embedding fonts says more about the
technical editing than about PowerPoint.









I don't understand how that rules out my suggestion.



Ah. Interesting.



Make a copy of an existing file, then delete all the slides but the one or two you'd like to send.



Yes. The graphic (on a different slide) will show what you're seeing on your computer regardless of what the
slide with the Ethiopic text looks like on my computer. Remember, I haven't a clue what it's *supposed* to
look like. The screen shot will show me.

Sorry it took a couple of days to get to it. Generating the new
presentation in a folder on my hard drive resulted in a new folder
containing lots of stuff besides the presentation file itself -- I
hope you didn't need that emailed as well.

 

[grammatim]

No problem on either count. What you sent was exactly what I was after.

I had a look at the slide in the Script Editor (which can often reveal more about fonts that PPT itself
will tell you). The text that includes both Devanagari/Sanskrit and Ethiopic is very definitely ALL set
in Arial Unicode MS. There are no requests for add'l fonts.

The specific characters requested are in a numeric range that contains no characters in Arial Unicode MS
(which fits with our earlier observation that neither Character Map nor Insert Symbol mentions Ethiopic).

But here's where it starts to get interesting: Apparently Windows has the ability to substitute fonts at
need when a requested character isn't present in the current font. In other words, it looks at your
presentation's request for Arial Unicode MS, character number 4707 decimal/1263 hex, finds that the
character isn't present in the font, goes rummaging around in its font collection, finds another font that
DOES have the requested glyphs, and uses it instead.

As unlikely as this may seem, I offer this as proof:

I went here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Amharic

and found a link to gfzemenu.ttf (GF Zemen Unicode), an Ethiopic font. I downloaded that, dropped it into
my fonts folder, went back to your PPT presentation (w/o even closing and reopening it or restarting PPT)
and bingo, it was now displaying the correct Ethiopic glyphs (ie, they matched the screen shot you
included, as near as I can tell).

(I picked a letter that doesn't change its shape when you add the
little pieces to it, so it would be clearer for the audience.)

Despite the fact that it's clearly using a different font to display the Ethiopic characters, PPT still
shows that the text is in Arial Unicode MS (and in fact it is ... PPT is still asking for character 4707
et al in that font, but Windows is doing some fancy footwork behind the scenes to supply the needed glyph,
even if it has to swap fonts to do it.

That pretty much nails down the "Why it happens" bit, I think.

Amazing!!

Seems like you need to be lashing your counterparts over in the
Windows office with a wet noodle, or something.

Now for the "What to DO about it."

The gfzemenu.ttf font I downloaded is completely embeddable. If the font you're using is also, you can
try embedding it in the PPT while saving.

First, you'd have to set the font back from Arial Unicode MS to [whatever you're using].
Then choose File, Save As, give the file a new name, then click Tools, choose Save Options, then put a
check next to Embed Truetype Fonts and save the file. This may or may not work ... here it crashed PPT
repeatedly(oddball fonts can do this).

I'll see what happens the next time I use these data as an example.

BTW, if I had _typed_ my Chinese examples instead of using a graphic,
would an entire font of 5000+ 16-bit characters have been incorporated
into the "packed" PPT presentation on the CD, thus making it rather
larger than 6 Mb? (Not that I _could_ type my Chinese examples: I
found a very full discussion of the many different Chinese IME's
available in Windows -- which left out the simple instructions of how
to install any one of them -- only one seems to be available in out-of-
the-box XP Pro -- or what the mapping of the phonetic varieties (which
is what I'd be using) to the keyboard!

If the font you're using will embed, then when you open the presentation on other computers, it should
work correctly.

For limited amounts of text, I'd suggest another simpler, much more reliable dodge:

Click within the text to get the editing cursor
Press ESC to select the shape that contains the text

I.e. the whole text box? How about images of just the few characters
involved?

Press Ctrl + C to copy the shape
Choose Edit, Paste Special and select PNG as the type; click OK

That'll give you an image of the text rather than the text itself. An image won't be editable, but will
require no fonts, so won't change.

You may then want to drag the original "fonted" text off the slide rather than just deleting it.
You can then drag it back on, edit, and reconvert to PNG should edits become necessary.

Whew. We owe one another a drink. ;-)

What does "PNG" mean?

You like eggnog?

 

[grammatim]

My counterparts? Here at PPTools Universal HQ, that'd be a wife, four permanent cats and a loaner kitten.
<g>

Like the other folks who answer questions here, I don't work for MS. Strictly a volunteer (it's easy to tell
.. the MS folks aren't allowed to get cranky with the customers).

But setting aside the potential for mass confusion (which we've managed between us to demonstrate clearly
enough, eh? <g>) this isn't all bad. Consider: PowerPoint's asking Windows to display a character that doesn't
exist in a particular font. Instead of just giving up then and there, Windows finds a font that *does* contain
the character and uses that. It might not be the right font, but as long as it can find one with the character
available, we get it, rather than the useless "Beats me, Boss" blank box that we'd get otherwise.

But that it claims the characters are in a font they're not in is most
unfortunate. (I don't know where it might have gotten the Ge`ez
characters when I told it to use Arial Unicode, since I'm not aware
that I have any Ge`ez other than Ge`ez Unicode, which what the final
result was different from!)

When I use characters with diacritics that don't happen to occur in
Times Roman, it replaces them with Tahoma (unfortunately), but it
doesn't claim they're Times Roman!

Now for the "What to DO about it."
The gfzemenu.ttf font I downloaded is completely embeddable. If the font you're using is also, you can
try embedding it in the PPT while saving.
First, you'd have to set the font back from Arial Unicode MS to [whatever you're using].
Then choose File, Save As, give the file a new name, then click Tools, choose Save Options, then put a
check next to Embed Truetype Fonts and save the file. This may or may not work ... here it crashed PPT
repeatedly(oddball fonts can do this).

I'll see what happens the next time I use these data as an example.

BTW, if I had _typed_ my Chinese examples instead of using a graphic,
would an entire font of 5000+ 16-bit characters have been incorporated
into the "packed" PPT presentation on the CD, thus making it rather
larger than 6 Mb?

Not necessarily. When you choose Tools, Save Options in the Save dialog box, you have the option of embedding
the entire font or just the needed characters. In the first case, you get larger files, of course, but the
presentation remains editable on other computers. In the second, the files will be smaller but you won't be
able to edit text in that font.

(Not that I _could_ type my Chinese examples: I
found a very full discussion of the many different Chinese IME's
available in Windows -- which left out the simple instructions of how
to install any one of them -- only one seems to be available in out-of-
the-box XP Pro

It may be that some of the others aren't included with Windows and must be purchased. Or came with earlier
versions of Windows?

I found a reasonably thorough explanation of installing and using Chinese and Japanese support here:http://newton.uor.edu/Departments&Programs/AsianStudiesDept/Language/...

-- or what the mapping of the phonetic varieties (which
is what I'd be using) to the keyboard!

I've never had call to install any of the Chinese IMEs. The Japanese IME allows entering characters in several
ways; for non-Japanese reader/speakers, the easiest is to enter the reading of the characters phonetically in
our normal roman letters; as you enter them, they get converted to hiragana (Japanese phonetic characters) and
thence optionally to kanji (Chinese characters).

I'm looking at http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/handson/user/IME_Paper.mspx?pf=true
, by Russ Rolfe, which shows lots of Jpn. keyboards but none for
typing in romaji -- the closest it comes is the kana keyboard.

You could do that as well; just create a text box containing only the needed characters. You need to be able to
select the entire shape that contains the desired text, not the text itself.



It's a graphics file format ... Portable Network Graphics.
The reason for using it rather than other formats is that it supports transparency, which you may need.


With rum? We can work with this. You take the nog, I'll take the grog.

I don't like rum. When I made eggnog, I used brandy. So you can have
the whole supply!