CY and CE fonts

[henryn]

Folks:

I've just done my periodic font-simplification on my new machine, and I'm
pleased to find that I'm down 23 fonts in my Word font menu.

I kept only the fonts that are mandatory and the ones I use.
Which brings me to Word's font menu. Currently, it lists 23 fonts,
including 9 fonts carrying the suffix "CE" or "CY", specifically:

Courier CE
Geneva CE
Helvetica CE
Lucida Grande CE
Monaco CE
Times CE
Lucida Grande CY
Monaco CY
Times CY

I've been exploring this issue for many years. I've found:

"CE" means "Central European" and "CY" means "Cyrillic". None of these fonts
are stored in distinct font files. There are no font files such as "Courier
CE" or "Monaco CY" in any of the official MacOS font folders. So, these
fonts can't be managed by the most obvious means -- moving the corresponding
font file.

Word font lists are divided into multiple sections, apparently "normal"
fonts first, then CE fonts, then CY fonts, each section separately
alphabetized. Despite many tries over many years, I've never heard a
satisfactory explanation why Word lists CE and CY fonts in the first place,
nor why in this three-section format.

Nor have I ever heard a satisfactory explanation of why I might want to use
these fonts. What are these fonts? I have heard general recommendations
against using them, as I recall, fearing non-portability. No problem, I
won't use them. But how do I get rid of them?

Bottom line is that 1/3 of my Word font menu is filled with fonts I don't
want, can't get rid of, and can't explain. Why should I have to slog my way
through font menus past a lot of fonts I don't ever use?

Oh, one more thing, Word --and other Office Apps-- are just about the only
apps I have that do list these fonts. In the past I've found one or two
others that do, but most don't.


Any ideas?

Thanks,

Henry

(e-mail address removed) remove 'zzz'

 

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

I think they're Unicode subsets of existing fonts. In Unicode, the CE and
CY glyphs are ranges within the character set.

Which means they will appear whenever you have the core fonts loaded. So:
Helvetica CE will appear of you have a Unicode version of Helvetica loaded.

Just a guess...

Folks:

I've just done my periodic font-simplification on my new machine, and I'm
pleased to find that I'm down 23 fonts in my Word font menu.

I kept only the fonts that are mandatory and the ones I use.
Which brings me to Word's font menu. Currently, it lists 23 fonts,
including 9 fonts carrying the suffix "CE" or "CY", specifically:

Courier CE
Geneva CE
Helvetica CE
Lucida Grande CE
Monaco CE
Times CE
Lucida Grande CY
Monaco CY
Times CY

I've been exploring this issue for many years. I've found:

"CE" means "Central European" and "CY" means "Cyrillic". None of these fonts
are stored in distinct font files. There are no font files such as "Courier
CE" or "Monaco CY" in any of the official MacOS font folders. So, these
fonts can't be managed by the most obvious means -- moving the corresponding
font file.

Word font lists are divided into multiple sections, apparently "normal"
fonts first, then CE fonts, then CY fonts, each section separately
alphabetized. Despite many tries over many years, I've never heard a
satisfactory explanation why Word lists CE and CY fonts in the first place,
nor why in this three-section format.

Nor have I ever heard a satisfactory explanation of why I might want to use
these fonts. What are these fonts? I have heard general recommendations
against using them, as I recall, fearing non-portability. No problem, I
won't use them. But how do I get rid of them?

Bottom line is that 1/3 of my Word font menu is filled with fonts I don't
want, can't get rid of, and can't explain. Why should I have to slog my way
through font menus past a lot of fonts I don't ever use?

Oh, one more thing, Word --and other Office Apps-- are just about the only
apps I have that do list these fonts. In the past I've found one or two
others that do, but most don't.


Any ideas?

Thanks,

Henry

(e-mail address removed) remove 'zzz'

--

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. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[Clive Huggan]

Hello Henry,

Re:

Why should I have to slog my way
through font menus past a lot of fonts I don't ever use?"

I agree the long font lists are a pain, even though the most frequent recent
fonts are listed at the top. I get annoyed whenever I have to scroll
through them in Entourage.

But I almost never go near the Fonts menu in Word, because I use styles that
incorporate particular fonts and font sizes, among many other things. The
styles are applied by keyboard shortcuts, as described under "Styles and
templates ‹ the keys to consistency and saving time" in some notes on the
way I use Word for the Mac, titled "Bend Word to Your Will", which are
available as a free download from the Word MVPs' website
(http://word.mvps.org/Mac/Bend/BendWordToYourWill.html).

Cheers,

Clive Huggan
============

 

[henryn]

Hullo John:

Thanks for your response to my post:

I think they're Unicode subsets of existing fonts. In Unicode, the CE and
CY glyphs are ranges within the character set.

Which means they will appear whenever you have the core fonts loaded. So:
Helvetica CE will appear of you have a Unicode version of Helvetica loaded.

Just a guess...

Yes, that makes sense, and it would seem you are correct, except I've seen
some mention on the web that CY and CE fonts pre-date Unicode support. As I
understand it --and I certainly may not-- before Unicode, these were
temporary workarounds to the problem of supporting character sets beyond the
language in which your system is operating. Does that seem to be
reasonable to you?

What do you make of the recommendations I've seen that CE and CY fonbts not
be used as they are very non-portable?

Also, I thought that Unicode support is fairly widespread today, but only
these fonts show up with CE or CY -- none others. Before pruning just now, I
had a huge number of fonts active, but only these show up.

Just trying to get to the bottom of this mystery...

Always a pleasure!

Thanks,

Henry

 

[henryn]

Clive Huggan:

Thanks for your response to my post:

Huggan at (e-mail address removed) wrote on 12/10/06 3:20
PM:

Hello Henry,

Re:


I agree the long font lists are a pain, even though the most frequent recent
fonts are listed at the top. I get annoyed whenever I have to scroll
through them in Entourage.

Yes, thanks for your agreement, though I think there's a fine distinction to
be made: Long lists are a pain if you don't want them to be long. If you
need long lists of fonts for a document, then they are a necessity. I find
most of my work requires very few fonts, but one writer's simplicity is
another's starvation.

Let's not forget that it is my computer and within reasonable limits imposed
by the operating system and the application, I should be able to configure
it as I need to.

But I almost never go near the Fonts menu in Word, because I use styles that
incorporate particular fonts and font sizes, among many other things.

Yes, fair enough, having been catechized both virtually and in person by
your esteemed colleague John McGhie on using styles, I'm extremely well
aware of the advantage of using styles.

Since you bring it up, why is there a Fonts menu at all? Shouldn't all
choices of fonts be made within the Format-->Style hierarchy?

The styles are applied by keyboard shortcuts, as described under "Styles and
templates ‹ the keys to consistency and saving time" in some notes on the way
I use Word for the Mac, titled "Bend Word to Your Will", which are available
as a free download from the Word MVPs' website
(http://word.mvps.org/Mac/Bend/BendWordToYourWill.html).

Yes, I'm very aware of BWTYW. Thanks very much for your work!

So, do you have any more information on what CE and CY fonts are, their
proper application, and if there is anyway to remove them from _both_ the
top level Font menu _and_ the font selection portion Format-->Style
hierarchy. The CE and CY fonts are in both.

Thanks,

Henry

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

Yes, that makes sense, and it would seem you are correct, except I've seen
some mention on the web that CY and CE fonts pre-date Unicode support. As I
understand it --and I certainly may not-- before Unicode, these were
temporary workarounds to the problem of supporting character sets beyond the
language in which your system is operating. Does that seem to be
reasonable to you?

What do you make of the recommendations I've seen that CE and CY fonbts not
be used as they are very non-portable?

At least on the Mac, CE and CY fonts were indeed separate fonts in OS 8/9 if
you installed the appropriate Language Kit. They were still available in OS
X (from the Language Kits of OS 9) up to, I think, OS 10.1. Maybe 10.2, but
I think it was from that point that they got installed directly if you
didn't "Customize" your OS X installation to exclude them. At some point,
but I'm not sure when, they just became a designation of the associated
glyphs in the Unicode fonts, as John said. (10.3?) In this version they are
only available in Office 2004, I'd guess, but CE and CT were still available
in Office X via some method (unlike many of the Asian glyphs).

I don't know if specific CE and CY fonts were available on Windows and, if
so, they must have been Windows 97 and Office 97 and earlier (at the latest)
since Unicode has been available there since Windows 2000/Office 2000.

I expect that Office 2004 Mac lists the CE and CY as separate fonts
for some sort of backward compatibility, or jut a way of excluding the
extended CE or Cyrillic glyphs if not chosen. Since on a computer that does
not know what these fonts are (maybe all Windows PCs?) other fonts will be
substituted, I think you'd have to test by asking someone on Windows whether
they get the Unicode version of the same font (Courier, Monaco, etc) or
whether they get Times New Roman or Arial no matter what the original was.

In fact, given that almost all of the fonts you list are Mac-only fonts
(Geneva, Helvetica, Lucida Grande, Times) those are going to be substituted
on a PC anyway. If all your recipients are on Macs, I wouldn't worry.

From a practical point of view, you will discover that changing the font to,
say, Times, or Courier, and then typing Cyrillic form the Russian Input
menu, results in everything being typed in Times New Roman. This is true for
almost any font you pick - it's a well known bug. The workaround is to
continue typing (in TNR), then, when finished, select all and apply Times,
or Courier, etc. But I've just discovered that you don't need the workaround
(i.e. no bug) if you set a CE or CY "font" and then type from an appropriate
input language (e.g. Times CY or Monaco CY). Interesting...
--
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.

 

[Clive Huggan]

Inline.

CH
===

Clive Huggan:

Thanks for your response to my post:

Huggan at (e-mail address removed) wrote on 12/10/06 3:20
PM:


Yes, fair enough, having been catechized both virtually and in person by
your esteemed colleague John McGhie on using styles, I'm extremely well
aware of the advantage of using styles.

*Wonderful* word, catechized!

Since you bring it up, why is there a Fonts menu at all? Shouldn't all
choices of fonts be made within the Format-->Style hierarchy?

Most advanced users of Word would probably agree -- but those who for their
own good reasons don't want to (e.g. don't have the time to probe Word's
idiosyncrasies) would be disturbed, not least because all other word
processing and graphic design applications have one...

So, do you have any more information on what CE and CY fonts are, their
proper application, and if there is anyway to remove them from _both_ the
top level Font menu _and_ the font selection portion Format-->Style
hierarchy. The CE and CY fonts are in both.

Who, me? My knowledge of CE/CY fonts is confined to reading the comments of
others, including your good self.

And speaking of others, m'learned colleague Berkowitz, in his most recent
post, has yet again advanced my knowledge by a quantum jump (I know enough
about atomic physics not to say "quantum leap", though). ;-)

Cheers,

Clive Huggan
============