Fonts for Romanian characters e.g. ă â î ș ț

Question

Level 1

8 points

Fonts for Romanian characters e.g. ă â î ș ț

Hello,

I cannot get consistent behaviour from the font characters above. Especially with the ș and ț. I am typing in Arial or Times New Roman and when I type ș or ț it goes in in the Monaco font and cannot be changed! Just today I noticed that this happens in MS Word for Mac 2003 but not in Mail. So is it a Misrosoft shortcoming? Drat - what is MS Word doing on my system? It is there because pages is a poor substitute!! Will be glad to know of a solution if anyone can help. thank you, John J

macbook Intel 13", Mac OS X (10.4.8), 2 Ghz model with 1.25 gig RAM

Posted on Feb 26, 2007 8:45 AM

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Answer 1

Neithan

Level 1

120 points

Feb 26, 2007 12:58 PM in response to Louis XV11

The fonts Arial and Times New Roman do not have those glyphs in Mac OS X. Lucida Grande is Arial's "OS X equivalent": it has all the non-asiatic characters you may need, and I guess it would automatically translate to Arial on Windows. You can use Times instead of Times New Roman (it has many more glyphs) while keeping Windows compatibility.

Mac mini Core Duo Mac OS X (10.4.8)

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Answer 2

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,252 points

Feb 26, 2007 10:34 AM in response to Louis XV11

Just today I noticed that this happens in MS
Word for Mac 2003 but not in Mail. So is it a
Misrosoft shortcoming? Drat - what is MS Word doing
on my system? It is there because pages is a poor
substitute!! Will be glad to know of a solution if
anyone can help.

If you are talking about MS Word X, it is an old non-Unicode app and can't do Romanian. If you are talking about Word2004, it should work fine as long as you are using the Arial and Times New Roman that come with that app (the ones that come with OS X and many postscript versions don't have the s and t comma I think). Lucida Grande and several other fonts should also work. You can see which fonts have the characters by going to Character Palette, View = Code Tables, Unicode Tab, 0219, and checking out the Collections Containing Selected Character pane.

Other apps that can certainly do Romanian besides Pages are TextEdit, Nisus Writer Express, Mellel, AbiWord, NeoOffice, OpenOffice.

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Answer 3

Louis XV11 Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 26, 2007 11:25 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

Thanks a lot for your answer. It is word 2004 that I am using and I would like to stick with it in order to exchange documents with others.
Since I have the right person to ask may I ask again?
1: If Word 2004 has these letters in Arial and Times New Roman how do I choose to use them and not the Apple font of the same name? Just now I tried changing to arial and times new roman within a Word doc (my own doc on this Macbook) and it leaves the ș and ț in Monaco. I went into compatibility in preferences and it says there is no compatibility problem in this document!
2: How do I get to the character palette you mention? It does not appear in a spotlight search. I see it in the International preferences pane but cannot do anything other than tick or untick it!
In fontbook I seee the following (Romanian excluded) and there is only one times new roman.
PostScript name TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT
Full name Times New Roman Bold
Family Times New Roman
Style Bold
Kind TrueType
Language English, French
Version Version 2.60
Location /Library/Fonts/Times New Roman
Unique name Monotype:Times New Roman Bold:Version 2.60 (Microsoft)
Also see this
Arial Bold
Arial Bold, 18 pt.
PostScript name Arial-BoldMT
Full name Arial Bold
Family Arial
Style Bold
Kind TrueType
Language English, Romanian, French, Arabic
Version Version 3.05
Location /Users/McJ/Library/Fonts/Arial
Unique name Monotype:Arial Bold:Version 3.05 (Microsoft)

PS. I spent a night in Flagstaff a few years ago on the way to the Grand Canyon. Unforgettable!

macbook Intel 13" Mac OS X (10.4.8) 2 Ghz model with 1.25 gig RAM

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Answer 4

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,252 points

Feb 26, 2007 12:37 PM in response to Louis XV11

It is word 2004 that I
am using and I would like to stick with it in order
to exchange documents with others.

It case it's of use, all the other programs mentioned earlier can save in .doc format and Abiword, NeoOffice, and OpenOffice are especially designed as clones of Word.

1: If Word 2004 has these letters in Arial and Times
New Roman how do I choose to use them and not the
Apple font of the same name?

In Home/Library/Fonts you should have copies of Arial and Times New Roman with dates of April 2004 and versions 3.05. These are installed by Word and are the ones you should use. In Library/Fonts you should have fonts with the same name but versions 2.60. You could deactivate these using Fontbook or just remove them manually.

2: How do I get to the character palette you mention?

Usually you can open it via Edit > Special Characters. Also in system prefs/inernational/input menu, check the box for Character Palette plus the box for "show input menu in finder," then go to the "flag" menu at the top right of the Finder and select the Palette.

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Answer 5

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,252 points

Feb 26, 2007 1:44 PM in response to Louis XV11

1: If Word 2004 has these letters in Arial and Times
New Roman how do I choose to use them and not the
Apple font of the same name?

Oops, I was badly mistaken in my earlier response. The Arial and Times New Roman installed by Word2004 do not contain the real s and t comma, but only s and t cedilla that MS has traditionally used in their place. So these two fonts cannot be used at all for Romanian using the commas, and you need to use others as suggested by Neithan.

On my machine, fonts that have the right characters include Geneva, Helvetica, Lucida Grande, Palatino, Times, Courier, Monaco, Hoefler.

Sorry to have led you down the wrong path.

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Answer 6

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,252 points

Feb 26, 2007 2:06 PM in response to Louis XV11

PS If you know someone with a Windows machine, you can download new versions of Arial and Times New Roman which finally can be used for Romanian with commas:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0ec6f335-c3de-44c5-a13d -a1e7cea5ddea&DisplayLang=en

Or you can get them from a Vista installation, where they are already present.

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Answer 7

Louis XV11 Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 27, 2007 4:45 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

Thanks for all your help again. Do you think I can use the add fonts menu item in font book to add the windows fonts you have pointed me to i.e. browse to the ttf files? Anyway, by your help, together with the other person who wrote, I can consider this fairly well sorted out now. I don't see any difference between times and times new roman so will just use times from now on - if others can read it on a Windows machine. LJ

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