New Font Displays as Arial in Word and WordPad

[Dave Cumberbatch]

I have a XP Pro machine with Office 2000 installed and have recently
installed a new font. The font will only show as Arial in Word and WordPad.

In all other programs (Notepad, Excel etc) the font displays as you would
expect.

I have reinstalled Office, deleted all reg keys and cannot get it to show as
it should.

On other machines the font displays fine in Word and I cannot see a
difference between them that could cause this.

I have looked into using different printers and tried logging in as
different users but this makes no difference.

It is a punjab font if that makes a difference. I have installed Asian
language support and the punjab language input settings but this makes no
difference. And the machine that the font works on has none of this setup.

I would appreciate any suggestions.

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

How are you typing your Gurmukhi characters?

Can you select the font in Character Map (part of Windows, not part of
Word)?

Can you select the font in Word's Insert Symbol? Being sure that
Insert Symbol is set to Unicode (at the lower right), what happens
when you select Gurmukhi (at the upper right)?

If "Gurmukhi" doesn't appear in that dropdown at the upper right, then
the font you're looking at doesn't have Gurmukhi characters. (You can
check this by setting the font to Arial Unicode, where you can see all
the major Indic scripts.)

 

[Dave Cumberbatch]

I am typing the characters by selecting the font and then just typing on the
keyboard (no shortcut keys)

I can select the font in character map and it displays as I would expect. If
I try to copy from here though it doesn't copy in the character that it shows.

If I select a character and at the bottom left it says 'Latin Small Letter
E' and I select and copy, it pastes in a small letter e instead of the
character I wanted.

I can also select the font through insert symbol in Word. I don't get the
Gurmukhi option in the top right. If it was a problem with the Font, why
would it appear fine on another machine. On the working machine, if I follow
the same steps, I see Gurmukhi in the top right?

Thanks for your help

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

It sounds like this is a very old font, which has the Gurmukhi letters
coded not in the Gurmukhi range of Unicode, but in place of the Roman
alphabet. This font will not work with the built-in Windows Gurmukhi
keyboard (and it will not automatically produce the contextual shapes
of h r w etc.).

I would guess that your document is set to Punjabi language, which
means that Word is expecting to receive characters coded as Gurmukhi.
When you copy-paste a character that _looks like_ Gurmukhi, Word only
knows that it is a character _coded as_ roman alphabet, so it
substitutes its default roman font, which seems to be Arial.

On my computer I have two fonts with Gurmukhi coded in the proper
Unicode range: Arial Unicode (which is different from Arial, and came
with Windows), and Raavi (which I don't seem to have downloaded from
anywhere, so it probably came with Windows or Word).

Incidentally, have you gone to the Windows Control Panel > Regional
and Language Settings and activated the Gurmukhi keyboard? (You may
need to have your Windows XP distribution disk to do the
installation.)

 

[Dave Cumberbatch]

I have looked at this some more and on the working machine, it doesn't matter
which subset I select the font looks exactly the same.

In Basic Latin or Gurmukhi, there is only 1 set of characters.

 

[Dave Cumberbatch]

I am actually trying to write using this font in a new document, wouldn't
that mean it should just show the only characters that it has. I'm not trying
to open anything written with these characters.

I was having trouble trying to get a Gurmukhi input through Regional
settings. Is there any chance you could tell me what I'm missing. Not sure if
I'm looking in the wrong place.

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

Actually if you had a document that you know was written with the font
in question, it would be most interesting to know what you see when it
opens in Word.

I'm in Vista, not XP, but assuming you know how to get to the very
long list of languages that can be enabled -- where it invites you to
Add Keyboards -- scroll down to Punjabi and choose the Punjabi
keyboard (not the Hindi, which would presumably give you Devanagari
characters as used by non-Sikh Punjabi-speakers in India). You will
then have a square icon near the bottom right corner of your screen
showing EN. When you click on that, a pop-up appears that offers you
PU (probably) as well.

To get there you need Control Panel > Regional and Language Options >
[one of the tabs, I don't remember]. At the bottom of the panel you
see checkboxes for "Asian" and for "Complex" languages. You need to
check "Complex" (which turns on support for Indic scripts and for
right-to-left scripts, so you could type Punjabi in Arabic characters
like non-Sikh Punjabi-speakers in Pakistan).

I'm not sure what you mean by "only 1 set of characters." Are they
roman-alphabet or Gurmukhi? Whenever you select a character in Insert
Symbol, its code number shows up in the middle window near the bottom.
If that code is between 0021 and 007E, then the characters are coded
as Basic Latin (even if they look like Gurmukhi letters). If the code
is between 0A01 and 0A74, then the characters are coded as Gurmukhi.

 

[Dave Cumberbatch]

Thanks. I've added the punjabi input and tested it, It uses the arial font
and puts in the gurmukhi characters from the arial font when I select this
font.

I have tested though and this font now does work in Wordpad. This means the
only application not able to use this font is Word.

Actually if you had a document that you know was written with the font
in question, it would be most interesting to know what you see when it
opens in Word.

I'm in Vista, not XP, but assuming you know how to get to the very
long list of languages that can be enabled -- where it invites you to
Add Keyboards -- scroll down to Punjabi and choose the Punjabi
keyboard (not the Hindi, which would presumably give you Devanagari
characters as used by non-Sikh Punjabi-speakers in India). You will
then have a square icon near the bottom right corner of your screen
showing EN. When you click on that, a pop-up appears that offers you
PU (probably) as well.

To get there you need Control Panel > Regional and Language Options >
[one of the tabs, I don't remember]. At the bottom of the panel you
see checkboxes for "Asian" and for "Complex" languages. You need to
check "Complex" (which turns on support for Indic scripts and for
right-to-left scripts, so you could type Punjabi in Arabic characters
like non-Sikh Punjabi-speakers in Pakistan).

I'm not sure what you mean by "only 1 set of characters." Are they
roman-alphabet or Gurmukhi? Whenever you select a character in Insert
Symbol, its code number shows up in the middle window near the bottom.
If that code is between 0021 and 007E, then the characters are coded
as Basic Latin (even if they look like Gurmukhi letters). If the code
is between 0A01 and 0A74, then the characters are coded as Gurmukhi.

I am actually trying to write using this font in a new document, wouldn't
that mean it should just show the only characters that it has. I'm not trying
to open anything written with these characters.

I was having trouble trying to get a Gurmukhi input through Regional
settings. Is there any chance you could tell me what I'm missing. Not sure if
I'm looking in the wrong place.