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NeoOffice :: View topic - Using MS Symbol font in NeoOffice
Using MS Symbol font in NeoOffice
 
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wjshack
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 10, 2005 9:57 am    Post subject: Using MS Symbol font in NeoOffice

NeoOffice thinks it has a Symbol font because I have a Symbol font in my font library. However, it does not recognize the apple encodings for Symbols and so either when the Symbol is selected I get a (not alpha), b (not beta). In OpenOffice I have replaced the Symbol font in the share/fonts/truetype with the MS Symbol.ttf font and this solves the problem. I thought I could solve the problem in NeoOffice by putting the MS Symbol.ttf in /Applications/NeoOfficeJ.app/Contents/MacOS/share/fonts/truetype. However, it doesn't.

Is there something else I should be doing to get NeoOffice to use the MS Symbol.ttf file for the Symbol font?

It is convenient that NeoOffice uses Mac fonts directly, but it would be helpful if it would give priority to fonts in /share/fonts/truetype.
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sardisson
Town Crier
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Joined: Feb 01, 2004
Posts: 4588

PostPosted: Fri Jun 10, 2005 1:20 pm    Post subject: Re: Using MS Symbol font in NeoOffice

wjshack wrote:
NeoOffice thinks it has a Symbol font because I have a Symbol font in my font library. However, it does not recognize the apple encodings for Symbols and so either when the Symbol is selected I get a (not alpha), b (not beta).


This is because Neo/J (and Mac OS X) are Unicode-compliant applications. If you want to type the symbols like you used to do under Mac OS 9 or in non-Unicode compliant apps like MS Office v.X and earlier, you need to install the Symbol keyboard layout from Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X 10.1.

You can read this thread where we hashed things out over a year ago (some things are different due to the changes between 0.8 and 1.1 and 10.2 and 10.3/4), and I've also posted the keyboard layouts here if you don't have Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X 10.1 CDs handy....

Smokey

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JKT
The Anomaly
(earlier version)


Joined: Sep 18, 2003
Posts: 434
Location: London, UK

PostPosted: Mon Jun 13, 2005 3:24 am    Post subject:

Actually the easiest way to use Greek letters in text is to simply activate the Greek keyboard in System Preferences>International>Input Menu.
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wjshack
Blue Pill


Joined: Jun 10, 2005
Posts: 1

PostPosted: Mon Jun 13, 2005 5:51 am    Post subject: Using MS Symbol font in NeoOffice

The problem is not so much inserting Greek characters in my text. It is in having Greek characters in documents sent to me recognized. When I replace the Symbol.ttf font in the X11 OpenOffice fonts folder (i.e., the font OO creates by converting the Apple symbol font to true type), with SYMBOL.TTF, the Micorsoft symbol font, OO recognizes greek characters in documents produced by Word Mac and Word PC. Incidentally it also lets me insert greek letters in the normal way.

With a normal installation, Neo does not recognize greek characters in documents produced by Word Mac or Word PC. If I try the same trick that works with OO--inserting the MS SYMBOL.TTF in the Neo package in shared/fonts/truetype, it still does not recognize greek characters in imported documents. I assume this is because it still uses the Apple Symbol font. I would just like fonts in shared/fonts/truetype to take precedence.
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pluby
The Architect
The Architect


Joined: Jun 16, 2003
Posts: 11949

PostPosted: Mon Jun 13, 2005 7:28 am    Post subject:

I think that you are trying to apply an X11 programming solution to a Mac font problem. Since the OS does the loading for most of the fonts, loading of the "share/fonts/truetype" fonts will always be done after the OS loads your /Library/Fonts and ~/Library/Fonts directory. Furthermore, even if adding the "share/fonts/truetype" to the font list, there is no guarantee as to where in the font list the Mac OS X font iterators will put them in.

So, I think that your only option is to use the standard Mac OS X font management tool i.e. the /Applications/Utilities/Font Book application and disable any conflicting Symbol fonts that you don't want to use.

Patrick
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JKT
The Anomaly
(earlier version)


Joined: Sep 18, 2003
Posts: 434
Location: London, UK

PostPosted: Mon Jun 13, 2005 9:07 am    Post subject:

FWIW, this topic should probably be a wiki tip.

What are the copyright issues with supplying the MS Symbol.ttf font? Is it a freeware font or does it have to be purchased? If it is freeware, perhaps we ought to consider supplying it to help people who have this issue?

P.S. I am assuming this also affects bullet points etc as well as I often find that these are replaced by an _ when opening .doc files that contain them.

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sardisson
Town Crier
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Joined: Feb 01, 2004
Posts: 4588

PostPosted: Tue Jun 14, 2005 3:53 pm    Post subject:

The MS symbol font is not one of the ones available in the "web fonts" package, so it's not free/distributable (nor, does it seem, is it available with Word 2004! so people are really SOL on the Mac).

I had long been led to believe that this was an OOo-wide inability to import "Greek" from MS documents (as well as bullets), but some recent searching in IssueZilla makes it seem like it is, bizarrely, a Mac-only issue!

At any rate, both Greek and bullets are an ecoding/coversion issue, based on the fact that MS Word does these in a non-Unicode way.

Apple handles this in a very interesting way...TextEdit opens the document and translates the Greek (lists/bullets are lost on TextEdit!) into Unicode code points (you can tell this because when you change the font to Times, the Greek letter does not turn back into the Roman letter like it did in Word), but doesn't export (either in RTF or DOC or copy/paste) Unicode Greek codepoints! However, if you copy the Greek text from TextEdit to another app (e.g. Stickies) and then change the font and finally copy that text into Neo/J, it comes in as real Unicode Greek. Bizarre, bizarre.

Anyway, this is really an OOo bug that should have been fixed a long time ago. The relevant issue is IZ 16337 and anyone who cares should go make noise there. I've uploaded a sample doc and cc'd ericb to see if we can get some traction on the issue, but the more complaints/votes the bug gets, the more likely it will be that something will be done and we won't have to waste our time working on complex work-arounds that are so last century....

And here's a work-around that actually gets you proper Unicode text at the end of the day, instead of some faked-font-continuing-pre-Unicode-nonsense (assuming you have Classic): Download the last (free) version of WP-Mac and associated conversions, open your Word doc, save as WP 6.x/7.x/8.x, and then open that file in Neo/J. (Lists aren't converted to real lists, though...I need to bug William/Marc/Fridrich about that....) Maybe more work than the TextEdit copy-paste trick, depending on how much Greek you have to fix Smile

Smokey

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jiesa
Blue Pill


Joined: Mar 24, 2005
Posts: 2

PostPosted: Wed Jun 22, 2005 3:50 pm    Post subject:

I also have this problem with the Symbol font.

My original problem was that NONE of my programs on Mac OSX Panther would read the stupid Symbol font. But now with Tiger, the Text Edit actually will show the Symbol font. Sigh. I wish that NO/J would be fixed, though. That would save a lot of math and engineering students a lot of hassle Smile

Thanks for the help sardisson.
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sardisson
Town Crier
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Joined: Feb 01, 2004
Posts: 4588

PostPosted: Thu Feb 09, 2006 7:37 am    Post subject:

JKT wrote:
FWIW, this topic should probably be a wiki tip.

Finally done.

I hope never to answer any of those questions again.

Edit: I kinda rushed through that, so if any parts of the new article don't make sense, let me know and I'll clarify them... Smile

Smokey

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"[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
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JKT
The Anomaly
(earlier version)


Joined: Sep 18, 2003
Posts: 434
Location: London, UK

PostPosted: Thu Feb 09, 2006 9:26 am    Post subject:

Looked fine to me. I added a note on using Arial or TNR as your font as I found that other fonts may not produce characters that can be displayed in Word 2004. If someone else could check compatibility with Office v.X and/or Office PC that would help greatly too.
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sardisson
Town Crier
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Joined: Feb 01, 2004
Posts: 4588

PostPosted: Fri Feb 10, 2006 1:29 am    Post subject:

JKT wrote:
Looked fine to me. I added a note on using Arial or TNR as your font as I found that other fonts may not produce characters that can be displayed in Word 2004. If someone else could check compatibility with Office v.X and/or Office PC that would help greatly too.

Thanks for that, JKT; I decided to "promote" your note to a full-fledged section Wink

Which also brings to mind that we really should have an article about "best practices for MS Office compatibility" or something. I'll go ahead and stub in something, and anyone who has anything to add, please do (JKT knows a fair amount about this, but as he's said elsewhere, he's pretty busy at the moment, so it might be a stub for a long time if we expect him to do all of it Wink )

Edit: Here, and also listed under a new "Compatibility and Document Exchange" section on the Tips and Hints page.

Smokey

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