Symbol Font Doesn't Display on _Some_ Macs

[terpfan91]

I'm editing a Word 11.1 document that was created by a colleague on a
PC. The document uses a lot of greek letters / symbols. These symbols
display just fine on my PowerMac at the office, but on my PowerBook at
home they are replaced by blanks (squares). Both Macs are running Word
11.1 in OS X 10.4.2.

Any ideas how to solve this? I assume the PowerMac has a font that the
PowerBook doesn't, but I'm not sure where to start looking or how to
add it to the PowerBook.

Many thanks.

 

[matt neuburg]

I'm editing a Word 11.1 document that was created by a colleague on a
PC. The document uses a lot of greek letters / symbols. These symbols
display just fine on my PowerMac at the office, but on my PowerBook at
home they are replaced by blanks (squares). Both Macs are running Word
11.1 in OS X 10.4.2.

Any ideas how to solve this? I assume the PowerMac has a font that the
PowerBook doesn't, but I'm not sure where to start looking or how to
add it to the PowerBook.

Many thanks.

The first thing to ask is: what font is it? Just select one of the
characters in question: Word tells you what font it is even if you don't
have that font.

You can use Font Book, by the way, to learn instantly what fonts are
installed. It's in your Applications folder. m.

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

The first thing to ask is: what font is it? Just select one of the
characters in question: Word tells you what font it is even if you don't
have that font.

You can use Font Book, by the way, to learn instantly what fonts are
installed. It's in your Applications folder. m.

Personally, I vigorously stay away from the Symbol font. I've always
always had problems going from one computer to the other with it. If
both computers use the Greek characters inserted from Unicode fonts,
then you're usually fine. I even created shortcuts to automatically
insert the letters that I often use (Insert:Symbol)

Corentin

 

[matt neuburg]

Personally, I vigorously stay away from the Symbol font.

Right, I've been clear about that in many past posts, and my eBook on
Word describes very clearly how you can make Word display the very same
characters in the Symbol font sometimes show up as characters and
sometimes show up as boxes.

So this could be nothing more than that problem.

But the OP did not say definitely in the body of the note (despite the
title) that the Symbol font was the problem. Let's hold on until we know
more facts. If the font *is* the Symbol font, then of course you're
exactly right. m.

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Right, I've been clear about that in many past posts, and my eBook on
Word describes very clearly how you can make Word display the very same
characters in the Symbol font sometimes show up as characters and
sometimes show up as boxes.

Soooo true!!! (I would even say it turns out as a box more often than it
shows up OK :-> ),


Corentin

 

[Don Newmeyer]

Personally, I vigorously stay away from the Symbol font. I've always
always had problems going from one computer to the other with it. If
both computers use the Greek characters inserted from Unicode fonts,
then you're usually fine. I even created shortcuts to automatically
insert the letters that I often use (Insert:Symbol)

Corentin

So what font should one use to display greek characters or mathematical
symbols beyond those typically (no pun intended) included in unicode fonts?
I've always assumed that Symbol was the one to use, because everybody has
it.

Don

 

[terpfan91]

Thanks for your comments and for your patience with this issue I'm
having. The characters that aren't displaying are various Greek letters
(Tau and Lambda to be precise).

However (in response to Matt) when you select these in Word, they show
up as Times New Roman (bold) fonts. The NTR font seems to be installed
correctly on both the PowerMac (where the greek letters display fine)
and the PowerBook (where they don't).

Any ideas? Thanks.

 

[Elliott Roper]

Thanks for your comments and for your patience with this issue I'm
having. The characters that aren't displaying are various Greek letters
(Tau and Lambda to be precise).

However (in response to Matt) when you select these in Word, they show
up as Times New Roman (bold) fonts. The NTR font seems to be installed
correctly on both the PowerMac (where the greek letters display fine)
and the PowerBook (where they don't).

You might check the TNR font repertoire using Font Book. One or the
other is probably not Unicode. Documents created with the non-unicode
TNR will probably have the greek characters in symbol font. You have
already been told how to tell what font a character is from.

Or just copy the one the works to the other machine, making sure that
you get rid of the non-unicode TNR from all the four or five places it
can be lurking first (Font Book will tell you where it is. cmd-R is a
shortcut to show the font in the finder). Alternatively, use the TNR
that came with Office 2004. Unless you are having more than your share
of bad luck, that one is Unicode.
My Word v.X TNR bold is definitely not unicode and the Font Book
repertoire shows only beta mu delta pi in lower case and sigma pi omega
delta in upper. There are also a couple of very mal-formed phis and a
strange condensed omega as well. No self respecting greek mathematician
would touch them with a long stick.

Just because both fonts are called Times New Roman, surely you don't
expect them to be the same?

 

[terpfan91]

Brilliant. That worked.

The PowerBook was using a 368k version of NTR version 1.4.1 while the
PowerMac was using both that one and a 1.1M version 3.05. (The same
version as what was in the MS Office font folder.) Adding version 3.05
fixed it.

Many thanks Elliott

 

[matt neuburg]

So what font should one use to display greek characters or mathematical
symbols beyond those typically (no pun intended) included in unicode fonts?
I've always assumed that Symbol was the one to use, because everybody has
it.

Any font you like. Unicode isn't about fonts, it's about characters
(properly, "glyphs"); and the system will find the character in any font
that contains it if the font that you're using happens not to.
Everything needed for Greek is present in a number of commonly used Mac
OS X fonts, including Lucida Grande, Times, and Helvetica. m.

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

So what font should one use to display greek characters or mathematical
symbols beyond those typically (no pun intended) included in unicode fonts?
I've always assumed that Symbol was the one to use, because everybody has
it.

The problem with Symbol is that there are different versions around and
their mapping doesn't perfectly correspond (hence the boxes).

Unicode fonts can contain thousands of characters and I'm quite sure you
can find anything you'd ever need in term of Greek letters or
mathematical symbols in most Unicode fonts. Just look in the MacOS X
character palette (System Preferences:International:Input menu and then
make sure the keyboard menu shows up in the menu bar and select the
character palette -you can then use it from the Finder or Office or...),
You'll see, there are really a LOT of characters there,



Corentin

 

[Don Newmeyer]

The problem with Symbol is that there are different versions around and
their mapping doesn't perfectly correspond (hence the boxes).

Unicode fonts can contain thousands of characters and I'm quite sure you
can find anything you'd ever need in term of Greek letters or
mathematical symbols in most Unicode fonts. Just look in the MacOS X
character palette (System Preferences:International:Input menu and then
make sure the keyboard menu shows up in the menu bar and select the
character palette -you can then use it from the Finder or Office or...),
You'll see, there are really a LOT of characters there,

Thanks! Very helpful. In the beginning, there was the Word 4.0 for the Mac,
and there was Symbol font (that is, in the beginning of MY Macintosh
experience). But now I guess us oldtimers need to come up to speed.

Don

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Thanks! Very helpful. In the beginning, there was the Word 4.0 for the Mac,
and there was Symbol font (that is, in the beginning of MY Macintosh
experience). But now I guess us oldtimers need to come up to speed.

Yeah, Word 4 did not quite support Unicode :->

Corentin

 

[Scott Melendez]

I experienced this when I substituted TrueType fonts for Type 1 or OpenType.
For example, a document that had properly bulleted items using the supplied
Times New Roman font suddenly became blank squares when I replaced it with
the Type 1 version. It must have something to do with the character set.