Symbol Font - not working

Question

Level 1

8 points

Symbol Font - not working

Problem:
I cannot get the font called Symbol by selecting it.

What I do,
I select a letter in my manuscript,
I then select Format>Fonts>Show Fonts and a Font selection box is displayed
I there select PDF/Symbol/Regular/12

The font of the character does not change to the symbol font as I know it.
The font is however changing, I can not tell which font it is, but it is some regular western character font, resembling helvetica in appearance but not exactly.

Workaround:
I I go to Edit>Special characters, and there I can select the category [Greek]. Since I am only interested in the Symbol font because of the greek characters used in mathematics, this will do, i.e. I first select the font Symbol, then I change the character by the Special Characters box.

Some additional info:
The Special Characters box shows Font variations of the Greek letters. Symbol-Regular is always one of the variations and look fine.

In the application Font Book I can pick the font Symbol and it shows the correct (greek) characters.

In the application Microsoft Word I can select the font Symbol and it shows the correct greek characters.

But like Pages, TextEdit will not show the correct characters when I select the font symbol.

It seems like there might be some confusion by the system which of the fonts is the Symbol font, as if some applications selected it by number and others by name and there was some duplicate or nonstandard fonts that are dumped to my fonts?

iimac 3GHz Intelcore 8 GB RAM, Mac OS X (10.6.3)

Posted on Jul 26, 2010 7:21 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

115,940 points

Jul 26, 2010 7:29 AM in response to tordenspyd2

Unfortunately there are two kinds of Symbol fonts. Old non-unicode ones where the symbols are mapped to Latin, and modern unicode fonts where the symbols are mapped to Greek. Since Unicode is the international standard, it is bad idea to use the old non-unicode fonts if you can avoid it -- there is no guarantee that other systems will see Greek instead of Latin.

One consequence of using Unicode is that you cannot just switch the font and then type to get Greek. Instead you must use the Character Viewer or switch to the Greek keyboard layout. This ensures that the correct Unicode codepoints are used for your symbols.

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Answer 2

Jul 26, 2010 1:48 PM in response to tordenspyd2

On my 10.6.4 System I have 3 Symbol Fonts:

*Bookshelf Symbol 7* - a ttf by RICOH (Installed by MsOffice)

Symbol - ttf © Apple & Bitstream (Installed for pdf compatibility)

*Apple Symbols* - ttf © Apple (Looks like part of the system installation and is the Unicode version I think)

I'd use Apple Symbols.

Peter

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Answer 3

tordenspyd2 Author

Level 1

8 points

Jul 27, 2010 2:06 AM in response to tordenspyd2

Thank you gentlemen!
I think this was helpful.
It was not what I had hoped for though.
I am not so sure it is justified to call arrangements which have worked for 25 years, a bad idea.
But, yes, it does work to switch the font called Symbols and then switch the keyboard to greek or alternatively use the special characters input palette to input those characters.
I've not tested compatibility with many PCs but at least the document looks OK when exported to MSWord on my own Mac, so Im optimistic.

Thanks!

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Answer 4

Jul 27, 2010 8:13 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

Unfortunately there are two kinds of Symbol fonts. Old non-unicode ones where the symbols are mapped to Latin, and modern unicode fonts where the symbols are mapped to Greek.

"Note that the Symbol font prints Greek symbols in the place of English letters," PostScript Language Tutorial and Cookbook, Adobe Systems, December 1985, Chapter 8.2 Array Operators, page 85, ISBN ISBN 0-201-10179-3.

Steven Jobs as CEO of Apple, Wolfgang K u m m e r as CEO of Allied Linotype, and John Warnock as CEO of Adobe agreed in the fall of 1984 on implementing the PostScript imaging model. The concept was that the character model would have insufficient code points (256 max) and the composition model would not support glyph substitution. These shortcomings were 'solved' by changing the input of character information. When one teaches a class mathematics on a computer, one begins the lesson by teaching the class the simple set theory of why the three CEOs were wrong.

/hh

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Answer 5

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

115,940 points

Jul 27, 2010 9:55 AM in response to tordenspyd2

I am not so sure it is justified to call arrangements which have worked for 25 years, a bad idea.

Personally I think the arrangement by which Greek symbols were mapped to Latin letters is probably one of the worst ideas ever implemented in computer engineering, and unfortunately its effects are going to be with us for a rather long time.

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