Arbortext APP: Multi level default fonts & missing char highlight

[ChrisWestern]

APP's Pseudo fonts are great IF you know what character ranges you are missing, but in many/most cases you do not and its down to the proof readers to spot any unusual characters that may come through especially in multi language work as missing or unavailable in the font represented by an empty glyph box [] or question mark ?

Even character maps can be helpful in this case but again you can only set this up retrospectively once you spot missing chars.

APP has the 'default font' property using <?tfdef> Processing Instruction or fParagraph.defaultFont in JS-FOM, which gives the option of a fallback font should the main/current font be missing any characters.

This is good until you discover your fallback font even Arial MS Unicode or your best guess custom pseudo font might not 'catch all'.

So what would be nice is if this default font had a number of permitted levels to define a set of default fonts as fall-backs.

What also would be a complimentary extra feature is fDisplay highlight on screen/printout of missing chars so they are easier to spot.

This case was presented by a number of our STM Journal producing BPO customers and presented here for voting.

Regards

Chris

____________________

Chris Western,

tformat ltd.

Solutions : Services : Software

www.tformat.com

[GarethOakes]

There is no automated way to catch missing glyphs, that is the underlying problem that needs solving. I like the suggestion of having a way to visualise the missing glyphs, especially in cases where the usual missing glyph symbol is not able to be displayed. It would also be really good if there was a way to have an exception or error thrown by the system so you could capture the problems in batch mode.

[SimonTaylor]

We hope to provide a solution in the next release or two...

Simon

[SimonTaylor]

Hi Chris

Please see formatting.currentParagraph.showMissingGlyphs = true;

This will output a box showing the missing glyph ID rather than the missing glyph symbol from the font.

Simon

[GarethOakes]

Thrilled! Does it also log something or throw an exception that you can programmatically handle? So users don't have to eyeball every page?

[SimonTaylor]

Not at the moment, but I'll add it to the list...

[GarethOakes]

Thanks! Out of interest, could you print the pages to XML then scan the XML to pick up missing glyphs? e.g. does it output something in the XML print driver for missing glyphs? (or JS print driver for that matter) I'm not able to test this right now in 12.0 but that would solve the problem.