Font not showing scandinavian characters

Question

Level 1

13 points

Font not showing scandinavian characters

I have a G5 osx 10.3.9 with some strange font problem. System and application language is English. Keyboard layout is Swedish pro.

When ever I choose Arial or Times New Roman in Adobe InDesign or MS Word the scandic characters displays as squares. This applys only to Arial and Times New Roman, if I choose any other font I have in the system e.g. Helvetica, Garamond a.s.o. they all work fine. In InDesign in the caracter palette there is a small sample of the font. This sample reads sample on every other font but Arial and Times New Roman that reads !"#$.

I have tried removing them and installing new sets but that did not help. I have installed the latest updates to the os. I tried a program named Font Finagler who cleaned the font cache but it did not help.

any ideas anyone?
baldaer

g3, g4, g5 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Posted on Dec 7, 2006 12:29 AM

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Answer 1

Macfool

Level 4

1,000 points

Dec 7, 2006 1:16 AM in response to baldaer

Hi baldaer, and welcome to discussions.

Did this just start going wrong, or has it never worked. Does the font work in any of the apps on your mac? Did the fonts come with the system?

Thanks – Macfool

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Answer 2

baldaer Author

Level 1

13 points

Dec 7, 2006 2:24 AM in response to Macfool

I am the sysadmin and the users usually try to solve their problems on their own first before they turn to me. The fonts worked perfect 2 years ago when I installed them. I do not know if they are the original fonts or if the user has changed it. When I last night copied new sets of them I naturaly copied them from the computer sitting next to the problem one. So I do not know if they came with the system either.

I checked the apps again and the fonts seems to work fine in any other app. Tested TextEdit, FreeHand, Excel and InDesign CS! and they worked. But Word and InDesign CS2 still show Arial and Times New Roman wrong.

The user claims that Times New Roman has been showing strange since autumn this year and Arial these last two weeks. But she can not remember anything special happening, just ordinary usage.

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Answer 3

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,258 points

Dec 7, 2006 5:54 AM in response to baldaer

The most likely explanation is that you have multiple copies of these fonts and for some reason those apps are using old postscript versions that are not Unicode and thus don't have the characters at the proper codepoints. Are you talking about WordX (non-Unicode) or Word2004 (Unicode)?

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Answer 4

baldaer Author

Level 1

13 points

Dec 7, 2006 8:42 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

I have made a search trough the entire hd and there are several copies of the fonts but not within Library/Fonts nor User/Library/Fonts. Made some progress by removing the fonts again and this time installed them from cd I got Arial working in Word (version X). Though I removed it from User/Library/Fonts and installed it in Library/Fonts so I am not sure if that had solved it with the one already in the system. Times New Roman is already in Library/Fonts. More they also appear in Application////(lots of subfolders MSOffice)/Fonts and Library/Application Support/Adobe///Fonts.

Arial and Times New Roman still not working for InDesign but Arial is now showing ok in Word, Times New Roman in Word apears last in the font list among the cyrillic fonts and shows underline instead of square for scandic characters.

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Answer 5

vladster

Level 1

25 points

Jan 11, 2007 4:03 PM in response to baldaer

yes try to clicking the small "check" box to disable the font. Its the Helvetica Fractions and Fractions Bold. Then its the Times Roman thre's one called something like Calligraphy or you'll see the weird characters. Remove them too.
These are the only fonts, also by Removing the Duplicates from the Menu Options helps erase the fonts that are making errors.
That's what happens when you transfer a lot of fonts to your comp. =)

Hope this helps.
vlad

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Answer 6

baldaer Author

Level 1

13 points

Feb 25, 2007 11:51 PM in response to baldaer

ok,

I tried the helpfull advices above but they only helped partially. I got the types working correctly again by removing all fonts from all the locations where the system and the applications would look for them, and reinstalled only those currently in use by the user. I guess this means that one of the otther fonts was somehow corrupting Arial and Times New Roman, but do not ask me which one or how...

thanks for your help

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