Special Character Fonts not displaying in Editor window

[palsop]

I have several fonts recently installed that contain nothing but special symbols.

All display in the "Insert Symbol" interface window, but only some display in the editor window after you click "insert".

All fontsare OpenType with Postscript outlines.

Any insite as to why this is happeningwould be GREATLY appreciated.

[ClayHelberg]

Hi Pattie-



Sometimes it makes a difference how the fonts were installed. There's a
slight difference between what Windows does when you select "Install
Font" vs. dragging the font file into the Fonts folder. You might be
able to fix the problem by uninstalling and reinstalling the fonts. In
the past I've had better luck with the drag-and-drop installation method
than with the "Install Font" method.



Also, be careful to eliminate any font name clashes, where you have two
fonts of different types with the same name. We used to have a lot of
trouble with users having both a "Symbol" TrueType font and a "Symbol"
Postscript font. Removing the Postscript font solved the problem.



--Clay

[palsop]

Thanks for the suggestion, I've tried installing it both ways... same results.

I just can't figure out why it displays fine in the insert symbol window and not in the Editor window, very strange behaviour.

[naglists]

We control special characters through the use of elements, for example,
<arialms_char type="euro"> NOT for Editor display purposes, but to ensure
the desired character shows in the desired font at the end of the
composition pipeline. The normal Arbortext method would be to control this
with charent.cf. That method, however, doesn't always survive the pipeline
due to multiple xml parsings. That said, we do, since we are using the
element, control display within Editor using the screen FOSI's e-i-c.

I do not remember whether we had issues with special characters in specific
fonts displaying properly in Editor or not, but I vaguely recollect we had
issues with displaying the line return character.

Anyhow, there a couple of avenues of research I can suggest:
look into charent.cf maybe that will help

look into whether, even to prove the font is actually available, you can
control character display via an element / e-i-c specifically for that
purpose.

[GarethOakes]

Hi Pattie,



When you are inserting the character, what actually ends up in the markup? A
named character entity? Numeric character entity? Just a plain Unicode
character itself?



As was already pointed out, the charent.cf file can be used to tweak the
behaviour of named character entities. If you're getting a character nested
in PIs, like this:



X



Then Arbortext should do the right thing for you automatically. (Assuming
that the fonts are installed correctly on the Editor machine AND the
Publishing Engine / Print Composer machine)



If you're just getting a numeric entity or Unicode character then I'm
assuming that in order to get the special symbol coming from the special
symbol font you are going to need something else in the markup to indicate
that particular character must come from another font.



Eg. if your <para> body font was Times New Roman:



1. <para>ABC—DEF</para>

ABCDEF and the em dash will come from Times New Roman font.



2. <para>ABC—DEF</para>

You could add some functionality to the tag that switches fonts for
the em dash only. That way the ABCDEF could come from Times New Roman and
the em dash symbol comes from another font.



3. If you didn't want to have specific markup, and you are using Arbortext
5.4, then take a look at the Styler feature called "Combined Fonts". This
allows you to define which characters come from which fonts, without
requiring special markup to indicate font switches.



(BTW, all of this goes out the window if you are talking MathML and using
the Design Science MathFlow for Arbortext plugin.)



Hope that helps.



Cheers,

Gareth