Foreign Fonts in Word 2004 for Mac (OS X 10.3.4)

[James D. Frankel]

I am running Word 2004 for Mac (on a G4 Power Book running OS X 10.3.4), and
need help getting several foreign fonts to appear in my documents. On my
previous computer, a G3 Power Book running OS 9.2, my integration of foreign
language fonts into Word 98 was seamless. It seems counter-intuitive that a
more sophicticated application, operating system and machine should not have
th functionality of earlier generations. But I gather that the way OS X
cocoa programs like Word 2004 use fonts is incompatible with earlier
progarms and systems.

Anyway, I work in many different languages, including Arabic and
Hindi/Sanskrit (Devanegari). Is there anyway to be able to get these fonts
to appear in and print from my documents using Word 2004, or am I forced to
run my earlier Word 98 in Classic mode only if I wish to have this
functionality?

Can anyone please advise me? I would be grateful.

James

 

[Andreas Prilop]

Anyway, I work in many different languages, including Arabic and
Hindi/Sanskrit (Devanegari). Is there anyway to be able to get these fonts
to appear in and print from my documents using Word 2004, [...]

Use InDesign, Mellel, Nisus Writer, OpenOffice:
http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/#programs

 

[matt neuburg]

I am running Word 2004 for Mac (on a G4 Power Book running OS X 10.3.4), and
need help getting several foreign fonts to appear in my documents. On my
previous computer, a G3 Power Book running OS 9.2, my integration of foreign
language fonts into Word 98 was seamless. It seems counter-intuitive that a
more sophicticated application, operating system and machine should not have
th functionality of earlier generations. But I gather that the way OS X
cocoa programs like Word 2004 use fonts is incompatible with earlier
progarms and systems.

Anyway, I work in many different languages, including Arabic and
Hindi/Sanskrit (Devanegari). Is there anyway to be able to get these fonts
to appear in and print from my documents using Word 2004, or am I forced to
run my earlier Word 98 in Classic mode only if I wish to have this
functionality?

You don't say what the problem actually is ("getting fonts to appear" is
not suggestive of any definite phenomenon). However, the particular
languages you list are explicitly *not* supported by Word 2004 (p. 53 of
my Word 2004 eBook on this topic). m.

 

[James D. Frankel]

Dear Dr. Neuberg,

Thank you for your reply. I am sorry, but I lack the technical vocabulary
to describe the phenomenon any more definitively. Simply put, the
characters typed in the documents in these foreign fonts appear on the page
as empty boxes. But you have answered my question. It seems the problem
is that these languages "are explicitly *not* supported by Word 2004."
Apparently, this latest version is deficient to meet the needs of my work.
It is a pity I had never seen or heard of your eBook on the subject before
investing in a product that effectively does not serve the purpose for which
I bought it.

James Frankel

 

[matt neuburg]

the
characters typed in the documents in these foreign fonts appear on the page
as empty boxes

That sounds, then, like a different problem from what I was describing
before - it sounds like the problem is that previously you were
obtaining e.g. Devanagari characters by means of a special *font*. But
that's not going to work on Mac OS X where text is Unicode and what's
important are the *characters* (and the font is basically irrelevant).
So in that case, my first answer was probably wrong. I would suspect
that these documents and fonts are not going to work in *any* Mac OS X
program. The problem isn't Word, then, but the fact that you have
entered a world where fonts and characters work very differently from
your old world.

Again, the details are described at great length in my Word 2004 eBook.
Solutions, though, are hard to come by. What you'd like to do is a
massive sequence of find-and-replace operations where every character
that used to be in one of these bad old fonts is replaced by the correct
corresponding Unicode character. This is theoretically possible as a
macro, though it would be tedious to create. What you really want is a
magic bullet where you hand something your bad old font and it just
"knows" how to generate the macro that will perform the transformation.
As far as I know, there is no such bullet is generally available. Many
*particular* bullets exist, though, where people have written macros to
help with particular fonts. You might try asking among other users of
these fonts online to see what they are doing about this problem. m.

 

[James D. Frankel]

Thanks again. To be honest, I don't know whether it a macro probelm
invoplving Unicode or not. The fonts work in OS X Text Editor. I still
suspect it is the previously mentioned problem with Word 2004. A silver
bullet would be nice, since I am not that technically inclined --- I just
want too be able to type in Chinese, Arabic, Sanskrit, etc. the way I used
to be able to in OS 9 with Word 98.

James Frankel

 

[matt neuburg]

The fonts work in OS X Text Editor

Okay, that's very good news. So the difficulty *is* confined to Word.
Then it's back to my first answer: they (Microsoft) just aren't
supporting these particular languages yet. Probably the reason you're
seeing boxes is something like the same reason one sometimes sees boxes
with the Symbol font. As suggested earlier, try OpenOffice, or Pages, or
TextEdit - any of these may be able to just open and display your Word
documents.

If you'd like me to look into the matter further send me a font and a
couple of pages of a Word document. I can read Devanagari (not Arabic)
so that would be a good place for us to start. m.