Word for Mac 2008 OpenType font issues:Character spacing, font list and kerning

H

Holger_Gerhardt

I’m using Word for Mac 2008 (German version) on Mac OS X 10.5.2, and I’ve run into several problems when using PostScript-based OpenType fonts, with the first one being the most serious one:

1. Irregular character spacing

Word:mac 2008’s character spacing becomes severely messed up when using some of the most popular OpenType fonts (I’ve observed this with Adobe Garamond Pro, Minion Pro, and Myriad Pro and with FontShop’s Meta Pro):

When typing text in one of these OpenType fonts, everything looks fine at first. Saving and reopening the document also causes no problems. However, upon quitting Word and then reopening the document, its character spacing becomes horrid: Some characters cling together much too tightly, while there is too much whitespace between others.

This is independent of whether you save the document in the .docx (Open XML) or in the .doc format. Version compatibility does seem to play a role, though: Changing the compatibility settings from “Microsoft Word 2007–2008” to “Microsoft Word 2000–2004 and X” in the “Word” –> “Preferences” menu provides a temporary solution—but only until the next restart of Word.

(Please note that this is different from the ligature/kerning issues discussed elsewhere: <http://www.officeformac.com/ProductForums/Word/891>, <http://www.officeformac.com/ProductForums/Word/520.)>

SOLUTION: Fortunately, there exists a workaround for this: Saving the document in the RTF format makes the issue disappear!

This, of course, raises a question: Might any features of my documents be lost when I save them in the RTF format instead of the Open XML format?

2. Font list issue:

The OpenType fonts Meta Pro, Scala Pro and Scala Sans Pro—all distributed by FontShop—appear neither in the “Font” menu nor in the font list of the Formatting Palette. (Something similar has been noted in entry #9 on <http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?p=452775.)>

They do appear, however, in the font list obtained by choosing the “Format” menu and then “Font”. There, the typefaces’ names are listed as “MetaPro-Normal”, “ScalaPro-Regular”, and “ScalaSansPro-Regular”, respectively.

In InDesign’s font list, all fonts are displayed properly.

3. Kerning

The kerning for the Scala Pro font does not work under Word:mac 2008. Surprisingly, kerning does work for its sans-serif companion, Scala Sans Pro.

With InDesign, the kerning of the Scala Pro font works perfectly well.
 
J

John McGhie

Hi Holger:

Not a good idea to combine questions in here: your issues are likely to be
missed. Better to make them into separate posts, so we can be sure to see
them all.

However, in this case, the answer is the same for all of them:

"Yes, they know, it's a bug..."

Apple flat-footed Microsoft by its implementation of ligatures. Basically,
in OS 10.5.2, ligatures and kerning are "on all the time". They were
supposed to allow applications to turn them off as required.

There is a patch on the way.

Yes, you will lose data going to RTF, but not "much". Essentially, you will
only lose the new graphics objects such as SmartArt, and not all of them.

The loss may be greater on a different computer. There are two
considerations: Some artefacts will not be written to RTF because the RTF
translator can't handle all of them. And some artefacts will not be
rendered on computers with versions of Word older than Word 2007, because
they can't display those artefacts.

If you stick to OOXML, and the older computer is using the OOXML translators
that are provided free by Microsoft, they will be able to display the file.
They will still not be able to fully edit some of the artefacts, because
their version of Word can't reproduce them. But the artefacts will be
written to the file, and they will remain there and work fine when the file
comes back to you or is opened on Word 2007.

On the other hand, if you do not use the fancy squeezy graphics, you won't
lose anything, and neither will the other users.

Hope this helps


I¹m using Word for Mac 2008 (German version) on Mac OS X 10.5.2, and I¹ve run
into several problems when using PostScript-based OpenType fonts, with the
first one being the most serious one:

1. Irregular character spacing

Word:mac 2008¹s character spacing becomes severely messed up when using some
of the most popular OpenType fonts (I¹ve observed this with Adobe Garamond
Pro, Minion Pro, and Myriad Pro and with FontShop¹s Meta Pro):

When typing text in one of these OpenType fonts, everything looks fine at
first. Saving and reopening the document also causes no problems. However,
upon quitting Word and then reopening the document, its character spacing
becomes horrid: Some characters cling together much too tightly, while there
is too much whitespace between others.

This is independent of whether you save the document in the .docx (Open XML)
or in the .doc format. Version compatibility does seem to play a role, though:
Changing the compatibility settings from ³Microsoft Word 2007­2008² to
³Microsoft Word 2000­2004 and X² in the ³Word² ­> ³Preferences² menu provides
a temporary solution‹but only until the next restart of Word.

(Please note that this is different from the ligature/kerning issues discussed
elsewhere: <http://www.officeformac.com/ProductForums/Word/891>,
<http://www.officeformac.com/ProductForums/Word/520.)>

SOLUTION: Fortunately, there exists a workaround for this: Saving the document
in the RTF format makes the issue disappear!

This, of course, raises a question: Might any features of my documents be lost
when I save them in the RTF format instead of the Open XML format?

2. Font list issue:

The OpenType fonts Meta Pro, Scala Pro and Scala Sans Pro‹all distributed by
FontShop‹appear neither in the ³Font² menu nor in the font list of the
Formatting Palette. (Something similar has been noted in entry #9 on
<http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?p=452775.)>

They do appear, however, in the font list obtained by choosing the ³Format²
menu and then ³Font². There, the typefaces¹ names are listed as
³MetaPro-Normal², ³ScalaPro-Regular², and ³ScalaSansPro-Regular²,
respectively.

In InDesign¹s font list, all fonts are displayed properly.

3. Kerning

The kerning for the Scala Pro font does not work under Word:mac 2008.
Surprisingly, kerning does work for its sans-serif companion, Scala Sans Pro.

With InDesign, the kerning of the Scala Pro font works perfectly well.

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Nhulunbuy, Northern Territory, Australia
 

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