Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2003 10:36 am Post subject: Times New Roman looks different between Latin and Cyrillic
Hi all,
I installed some fonts from Windows to use exactly the same between two OpenOffices.
I have times.ttf, timesbd.ttf, timesbi.ttf and timesi.ttf.
On my Windows (and Linux) machine I don't see any visual differencies between the text written in Latin and Russian using this font. A Latin "A" and a Russian "A" look the same.
Using OO for X11 (Mac) GM I see a slight difference between Latin and Cyrillic on my printer (it's less visible on screen). Latin characters are thinner than Russian ones. It sucks, because numerals are considered to be Latin, so if I print [something in Russian] 2003 [something in Russian], the Russian text seems to be bold, but not 2003.
I use the same fonts (the same four files) under both Windows and Linux without problems.
This problem doesn't affect Arial, Arial Unicode MS, Tahoma. Didn't test all other fonts yet.
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2003 8:32 pm Post subject:
Hmm...first thing to do is to try to remove the "TimesBold.ttf" files that got converted when OOo X11 was installed. There may be some type of font conflict if two files advertise the same font. When you do that, be sure to remove the "pspfontcache" file (/Applications/OpenOffice.org1.0.3/share/psprint/pspfontcache) to force the program to regenerate the font metrics instead of loading them out of its cache.
If that doesn't work, try zooming in onscreen on the trouble spot in the document. Check to see if the times new roman characters are antialiased. If not, then the truetype font never got loaded and it's using screen bitmap fonts and perhaps trying to get clever with printer font metrics.
Hmm...first thing to do is to try to remove the "TimesBold.ttf" files that got converted when OOo X11 was installed. There may be some type of font conflict if two files advertise the same font.
I removed all converted fonts immediately, because I want to have the same look of my documents regardless the machine they were originally created on. I made a collection of Windows TTF fonts and use them for Windows (obviously), Linux and Mac. So, I have only four files, but no TimesBold.ttf.
OPENSTEP wrote:
When you do that, be sure to remove the "pspfontcache" file (/Applications/OpenOffice.org1.0.3/share/psprint/pspfontcache) to force the program to regenerate the font metrics instead of loading them out of its cache.
Not only I did it, but I also removed the same file from my home profile (~/Library/Preferencies/OpenOffice.org 1.0.3/). The problem remained the same.
OPENSTEP wrote:
If that doesn't work, try zooming in onscreen on the trouble spot in the document. Check to see if the times new roman characters are antialiased. If not, then the truetype font never got loaded and it's using screen bitmap fonts and perhaps trying to get clever with printer font metrics.
Yes, the Times New Roman characters are antialiased.
It seems I found the problem's origin. It's a printer driver. I have two printers: HP 5MP PS printer and Brother HL-1450 PS printer.
I made a file using TNR font with a same sentense duplicated using different font sizes, from 8 to 60. Onscreen the Latin and Cyrillic parts look the same in all sizes. I made a PDF and can send it to you, if you want.
When I print the PDF from Preview or Adobe Reader, it's perfect.
But when I print from OOo using the Brother, the problem occurs. HP prints well, no problem.
So, one can tell that the Brother driver is quilty. Well, yes...and no, because a friend of mine has the same problem with HP printers. It seems there is some problem that can occur with a certain combination of drivers, but I can't track it well.
What can I say, that the problem exists in GM, but wasn't present in beta version. My friend and I used the same Macs and printers without any problem. It's a GM "feature".
So far, until the problem is identified and solved I use my HP to print the short documents and convert to PDF before printing them using the Brother (it does 14 ppm vs. 5 for HP).
Maybe HP uses only the PS info trom OO and prints well (among with Adobe Reader) and Brother replaces some fonts with embedded ones, when available. because the embedded version of Times only has Latin, the PS info is used for Cyrillic.
Because the problem occurs only with this font so far (didn't try all installed fonts yet, but Arial and Tahoma work well), maybe that's a problem.
When I select directly any of my two printers, the text is perfect, the same among two and exactly matching the result of the pdf.
But when I use GENERIC PRINTER, I get this problem with the Russian parts looking bold.
When I select the printers directly all characters (Latin and Russian) look the same (A=A). While using the GENERIC PRINTER (I tried both printers by changing the default printer in Jaguar) the problem appears. Russian text is a little bit thicker.
But it's not all. In fact, while using GENERIC PRINTER the whole thing seems to be bold, the Russian part just a little bit more.
So, here is a comparative study of my fonts. First, I printed using the direct printer selection, next using GENERIC PRINTER.
Times New Roman seems bold and Russian is even "bolder".
Arial, the same.
Verdana, Bitstream Cyberbit, Courier New, Lucida Grande (the only Mac font I kept), Tahoma, XSerif Unicode all look bolder if I print through GENERIC PRINTER, but there is no visible difference between Latin and Russian parts of the text.
Now I undersand why this problem only arrived in the GM. GENERIC PRINTER simply wasn't here in earlier beta.
Now, should we avoid GENERIC PRINT and use direct printer selection? In fact, some people don't have any choice, because it's the only possibility they have to print. For example, I tried an HP 1220 PostScript USB printer and I have a problem with. Impossible to print directly, but works fine (sort of, because of the bold Russian letters) through GENERIC PRINTER.
It seems sometimes Plug&Play just plays against us. Both printers I own are parallel printers and connected through HP Print Server to the network. I manually installed both drivers and they work. HP 1220 being USB P&P, the driver is here only if the printer is connected. Maybe that's a problem.
In all cases it seems that a further debugging of GENERIC PRINTER is needed.
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2003 9:55 am Post subject:
Dude, I'm glad that you found the issue The generic printer entry is interesting and I'm not quite sure what it's doing...Dan's really the X11 printing expert. I know the difference is that the actual printer names surrounded in <> are the ones that have CUPS printer queues and definitely go through the OS X printing code. As for the generic printer, I'm not even sure if it goes through there.
If I recall, I believe Dan put in special code for the OS X printers to include the truetype font data in the postscript file for all fonts. For something like times new roman, I believe that the traditional OOo postscript code will be like "oh, the printer should have times new roman" and not bother putting the font in.
There are also some problems with shared printers and OOo that may also result in these font problems (I recall you mentioning one was hooked up to a print server). With some shared printers like USB shared printers and Rendevouz shared printers, the operating system in 10.2 doesn't provide a PPD for the printer on the other end of the line (PPDs are files that describe the capabilities of the printer like page size, name, etc.). The workaround Dan found for the GM was to have a generic PPD that lives in share/psprint/drivers named MacShared.ppd. When a shared printer is encountered, this is the PPD that is used. So if you're only connecting to one specific type of shared printer, you may be able to replace the contents of that MacShared.ppd with the correct PPD of the remote printer.
Most of our GM testing was with direct connect USB printers and network PostScript laser printers. The USB shared printers were a latecomer in our testing and have some technical issues given to us by the OS that just won't make them work well with OOo X11 I'm unsure if this would affect all X11 based applications, or if it's just OOo with its custom PostScript generation code.
Posted: Mon Nov 15, 2004 8:14 am Post subject: cyrillic fonts (times) in oo
open and edit:
/usr/lib/openoffice/share/psprint/psprint.conf or your path
comment all the font substitution (with ";") were you find ttf fonts - arial, times new roman or courier
like this:
;SubstFont_Times New Roman=Times etc ...
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The generic printer entry is interesting and I'm not quite sure what it's doing...Dan's really the X11 printing expert. I know the difference is that the actual printer names surrounded in <> are the ones that have CUPS printer queues and definitely go through the OS X printing code. As for the generic printer, I'm not even sure if it goes through there.
I'm unsure if this would affect all X11 based applications, or if it's just OOo with its custom PostScript generation code.