Greek characters in Georgia font

[John Altman]

This is probably more of a system/font issue, but it only comes up in Word
for me, and so I decided to post it here.

How do I get Greek characters in the Georgia font in Word 2004 on my Mac
10.4.8 system?

They're not in the Georgia font that comes with my system. Are they in any
other version of Georgia?

I ask because the NIH now requires Arial, Helvetica, Palatino Linotype or
Georgia in its applications.

Thanks,

John

 

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

Hi John:

Hmmm... This is going to be interesting

Microsoft commissioned Georgia as a way to get a serif font that looked good
on screen (at screen resolution). Microsoft owns the copyright, and has
licensed Ascender Corporation to distribute it.

Georgia used to be one of the package of Microsoft Web Fonts that were
available for free download (still are, if you Google for it). However,
since the open-source movement never got around to supplying any fonts that
Microsoft could use, Microsoft got a bit sick of distributing free font
libraries for Linux and pulled the plug

Georgia continues to be bundled with Apple OS X and most Microsoft
applications. However, the version we have on the Mac seems to be the
"original" 246-glyph "Macintosh International" character set that does not
contain Greek letters. You can tell because the download is about 240 kb.
The newer version is about 350 kb.

Ascender corporation http://www.ascendercorp.com/index.html sells an
updated, Unicode, version for 30 bucks. They say this contains that Latin-1
and WGL (Windows Glyph List) characters.

If it actually contains the complete WGL4 glyph list, it will have your
Greek letters. Otherwise, try Times New Roman: it supports a "larger" range
of characters. On the Mac, the widest range of characters is in Lucida
Grande if you can make do without serifs.

I guess if the NIH requires Georgia, the NIH could afford the 30 bucks to
find out whether the Unicode version contains the glyphs you need (or buy
the full set of four faces for $110).

Cheers

This is probably more of a system/font issue, but it only comes up in Word
for me, and so I decided to post it here.

How do I get Greek characters in the Georgia font in Word 2004 on my Mac
10.4.8 system?

They're not in the Georgia font that comes with my system. Are they in any
other version of Georgia?

I ask because the NIH now requires Arial, Helvetica, Palatino Linotype or
Georgia in its applications.

Thanks,

John

--

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

 

[John Altman]

Thanks, John. That was interesting

Now, some questions about how I deal with this in the real world.

1. Of course, I share documents with colleagues. Assuming I buy the Ascender
font, what will happen when my doc ends up on a Mac that doesn't have it?
Will my Greek characters in Georgia font get replaced by Greek characters in
Times New Roman? What will happen on a Windows box?

2. Currently, when I'm using Georgia font and I insert a Greek character from
the Character Palette, the font for subsequent characters switches to Times
New Roman. This is very annoying -- is there anyway around it?

3. Actually, to answer my own question, I've found that if I set up an
AutoCorrect entry for words that I commonly use that have Greek characters --
e.g. IFNg, where the g turns into a gamma -- then the gamma comes in as Times
New Roman, but the subsequent characters remain in Georgia (this is probably
because AutoCorrect is "activated" by the space that follows IFNg. I don't
mind doing this for all sorts of cases -- I've even setup an AutoCorrect for
something like "alphag" in which the 6 characters get replaced by a single
Greek alpha -- this is far easier than mousing around with the Character
Palette.

Even though I've got some not-bad workarounds, is there another answer to
question 2?

Thanks in advance,

John

 

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

Hi John:

Thanks, John. That was interesting

Now, some questions about how I deal with this in the real world.

1. Of course, I share documents with colleagues. Assuming I buy the Ascender
font, what will happen when my doc ends up on a Mac that doesn't have it?
Will my Greek characters in Georgia font get replaced by Greek characters in
Times New Roman? What will happen on a Windows box?

Yes, it will fall back to Times New Roman, probably on both computers. The
way Unicode works, the system will look first in the requested font. If the
glyph is not defined in the requested font, the system takes the character
from the font that is the next closest match.

2. Currently, when I'm using Georgia font and I insert a Greek character from
the Character Palette, the font for subsequent characters switches to Times
New Roman. This is very annoying -- is there anyway around it?.

Not really. If you select the next character and hit control + spacebar you
will come back to the font of the underlying style. However, Word does need
a character (or a space) to store the font change "in".

3. Actually, to answer my own question, I've found that if I set up an
AutoCorrect entry for words that I commonly use that have Greek characters --
e.g. IFNg, where the g turns into a gamma -- then the gamma comes in as Times
New Roman, but the subsequent characters remain in Georgia (this is probably
because AutoCorrect is "activated" by the space that follows IFNg. I don't
mind doing this for all sorts of cases -- I've even setup an AutoCorrect for
something like "alphag" in which the 6 characters get replaced by a single
Greek alpha -- this is far easier than mousing around with the Character
Palette.

Even though I've got some not-bad workarounds, is there another answer to
question 2?

No. The work-around you have discovered is the simplest.

Sorry!

--

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