Word2007 not showing font right. CorelX3 does. New Vista machine.

[Windbag]

I've been using MSWord 2007/Viista for a few weeks (previously Word2k/Win2k).
Opened an old document that used special font. The font IS installed on the
new machine as Corel X3 picks it up fine. It is a TTF not an OTF,

MS word does not. It is in the list of fonts. but previews wrong in that
drop-down box and in the document itself - it seems to be substituting the
font for another.

Ideas of how to get my font?

 

[Peter Jamieson]

It may be worth looking for clues in Word Office button||Word
optins|Advanced|Show document control|Font substitution...

 

[Windbag]

Thanks for the suggestion, it was certainly needed! I looked there, but the
only font cited as missing is Gill sans, and it is using True-type Gil sans
instead - which sounds pretty innocuous/OK to me.

Any other ideas, anyone?

 

[Peter Jamieson]

So long as your printer isn't set to something like "Generic text" I have no
other good ideas right now.

 

[Windbag]

Thanks for plugging away, Peter.
The printer is working fine - it is what is on screen that is the problem -
I never get to see my font even there, let alone hard copy....

Anyone else any ideas?

 

[Graham Mayor]

What Peter was trying to convey is that Word will only display the fonts
that the currently active printer driver is capable of printing. Whether the
printer that is physically connected to your PC works or not is irrelevant.

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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[Windbag]

Corel X3 shows the font fine (as I said at the start), and it prints it to
the printer fine. Obviously Word doesn't as it shows it on the screen wrong.

So I don't suspect a deficiency in printer (A Xerox Phaser 8200).

I just tried using the font in Notepad - it also gets it wrong.

But I've also just tried using the font in Excel2007, which gets it right!
So obviously I had to try PowerPoint2007, which aslo gets it right.
Going back to Word - it still gets it wrong :-(

The plot thickens....

 

[Graham Mayor]

You are not listening!

This has nothing whatsoever to do with your printer. It has everything to do
with the way Word addresses printer drivers.
Word can only use fonts that the active printer driver is capable of
printing. Word interrogates the driver far more closely than other
applications. Whether other applications can use the font is irrelevant. The
issue concerns not the printer but the *driver*!!!

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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[Windbag]

I am listening, but it seems I am not understanding.

You say "Whether other applications can use the font is irrelevant."
Why?

You also say:
"Word can only use fonts that the active printer driver is capable of
printing."

If it prints the font from other MSOffice2007 applications, in what way is
it not "capable" of printing the font?

If Excel and Powerpoint, which use the same driver, can
understand/display/print the font right, why can't/doesn't Word? More
importantly, what in earth is user supposed to do about it?
I'm using the updated Vista driver from Xerox, and if it works in the likes
if Excel2007, they are hardly likely to shoulder the "issue", as there is a
reasonable case to say there is nothing fundamentally wrong with their
driver, nor, presumably, the font.

If I didn't have a printer at all (yes, I know some are built in to Vista)
would Word refuse to show any new fonts at all?

Without a handle on what the problem is, Word2007 is, for me, fundamentally
flawed at the moment.

 

[Graham Mayor]

This is going to be difficult to explain -
http://www.gmayor.com/where_are_my_fonts.htm may help.

With Word the printer driver is an essential component of the document
formatting. Word interrogates the printer driver and will only allow
formatting that the driver is capable of providing.

The printer itself is irrelevant in that it is the printer driver that
determines the formatting and what can be displayed in Word. The printer
itself does not need to be present.

Other applications (even Microsoft Office applications) frequently address
the printer directly and with such applications the driver has less
influence on the process.

Without knowing what the font is, it is difficult to suggest why it will not
display - the driver, may for example, be switched to display only TrueType
fonts, or the font in question may only be a display font.

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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[Windbag]

Thanks for keeping going with me.

That is a partial help; it seems from your website that this has been an
issue with previous versions of Word.

How far back does it go?
With Win2k/Word2k/the w2k Xerox printer driver, it printed fine.

The font is a TrueType, as I said at the start - in fact it's one I
authoured, which is why I'm rather interested in being able to use it!

I've looked in the Xerox driver, and I thought I'd found the issue.

There is a setting under graphic-truetype font, with a drop-down box saying
"Substitute with Device Font" - I changed this to the only other option:
"Download as Softfont" - but it made no difference to the Word display :-(

 

[Graham Mayor]

You could send me a copy of the font (link on my web site) and I will see if
it will work in Word 2007 here.

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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[Windbag]

OK, done (I hope).

 

[Graham Mayor]

I have received the font - and replied. For the benefit of those watching,
who might be able to cast more light in the subject, the font displays
correctly as a truetype font in the font viewer and is listed in the fonts
list for both Word 2003 and 2007, however it does not display correctly in
that an alternative font is substituted (several printer drivers tried) and
the same font is sent to the printer.

The font displays correctly in other applications.

I am totally baffled - this does not fit the standard problem area that I
was trying to get over earlier, which is why we were for a while on
different wavelengths. I hope that others may have some ideas, to which end
I have cross posted to the printingfonts forum.


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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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[Character]

I have received the font - and replied. For the benefit of those watching,
who might be able to cast more light in the subject, the font displays
correctly as a truetype font in the font viewer and is listed in the fonts
list for both Word 2003 and 2007, however it does not display correctly in
that an alternative font is substituted (several printer drivers tried) and
the same font is sent to the printer.

The font displays correctly in other applications.

I am totally baffled - this does not fit the standard problem area that I
was trying to get over earlier, which is why we were for a while on
different wavelengths. I hope that others may have some ideas, to which end
I have cross posted to the printingfonts forum.

Some thoughts:

What are the NAMEs of the font, as seen with FontLab or Fontographer
or anything else that can display all of the internal names? Are they
internally consistent and do they possibly conflict with some other
font? And what is the font

What program was used to create the font? For instance, with
TheFontCreator it's very awkward to properly load a font's tables.

Was the font created by opening some other font to use as a template
(it might have some built-in artifacts that are confusing something)?

What is the font that is substituted (I gather that the substitution
occurs in Word both on-screen and when printed)?

Does the Microsoft Font Validator indicate any unusual errors (Almost
EVERY font will display many "fatal" errors, so it takes some
experience to determine which are unusual!)

- Character

 

[Peter Jamieson]

My best guess:

The algorithm that the Windows GDI has - or at least used to have - for
selecting a font is not particularly obvious. It's a long time since I had
to look at this - in fact my info. is probably pre-TrueType - , but in
essence, when a program requests a font using the GDI routines, windows
tries to find a match using the following characteristics in the following
sequence:
Character set
Pitch
Family (e.g. Decorative Modern, Roman, Script, Swiss)
Facename
....and so on...

If that is still correct, then I guess it's possible that a request for a
font name myfont may actually result in substitution by another font if the
requested character set is not available. Now it's also a long time since
I've created a font from scratch so I don't know what you would typically
specify (I used to use Corel to do it), but perhaps Word is always looking
for Unicode sets first, or perhaps something else that has not been
explicitly specified in the font that the user created.

Doesn't explain everything of course - e.g. why some software is OK and
other software is not, why printer is OK and screen is not, but perhaps
a. some software still uses older API calls than others
b. Word in particular is taking account of special "compatibility settings"
c. the user used to have some Windows-wide font settings (there used to be
some in WIN.INI, so I imagine they are in the registry somewhere now) which
have been lost during an upgrade.

 

[Windbag]

OK, just got the MS font group membership to get at the Validator download,
got it and run my font through it (not a public font - called ANouvSJB if it
helps).
and, yes, there are numerous errors.

Looking at the old PC, it looks like I used a rather old authoring program ;
Font Lab; TypeTool 1.3 (2001)
and I think I remember finding after finished that I had High Logic; Font
Creator Pro 5.0.1 (2005).

It was based on an existing font to start with and then extensively changed.

But the big one is that I seem to have copied the font to Vista fonts rather
than installed it (probably to get something to work quickly).

Anyway, once it is deleted, Vista won't then re-install it; it says it is an
invalid font file (which might be why I copied it). So it looks as though
Vista does the same checks that Word does.

I've got some major work to do for a week, but after that I'll come back here.

I've got the validator output and can put that somewhere if it will help.

If I re-author via Font Creator Pro 5.0.1 (2005) would that be a good move?

I'll pick up any thoughts you folks may have next week

Regards

Steve

PS I still think it's a bit mean that other apps can use it but there's no
option to let Word try it. I can understand a warning - then you could
ascribe problems to the font - but to shut you out completely feels a
backward step.