Brief translation:
Pierre fixed his problem by deactivating the two fonts Arial and Times New Roman in Font Book. Looks like weird…
He points out that his user account and Mac OS X are not on the same hard disk partition.
I ask him if he rebooted the Mac after having deactivated the two polices.
Oscar,
Thanks, maybe you found the cause of the problem.
Joined: Jun 20, 2006 Posts: 2051 Location: Midwest, USA
Posted: Fri Apr 06, 2007 7:05 am Post subject:
Translation of Pierre's last post:
Thank you for all your posts and suggestions.
I understand technical English rather well when reading it, but I find writing more difficult. Thus, I continue in French.
I thus moved the font file for Microsoft Word X for Mac Service Release 1 to my desktop. I restarted my Mac but that did not change anything.
I thus returned the file to its place. Then I went to FontBook and disabled the entire Arial font family and the entire Times New Roman font family. Then I started NeoOffice again and, to my surprise, it worked!
I.e. although disabled in FontBook, the two disabled fonts (Arial and Times New Roman) are available in NeoOffice and also in the Word application. This operation is a little obcur for me, but that seems to be a satisfactory solution if it does not have an unexpected disadvantage in other applications.
FYI, it should be known that my hard disk is partitioned and that the files of my account are placed on a different volume than Mac OS X. Unitl now, that never posed a problem, but here we have a rather particular case. (??I'm not sure I got this last phrase right)
I will now endeavour to seek how one can make a merger between two files under NeoOffice to make a mass mailing...
Thank you for all your contributions, Pierre
End Translation
In case folks are wondering, I've chosen to do full translations of Pierre's posts (rather than summaries) because of the amount of technical/procedural detail, all of which is probably important information to have in finding a solution.
I have been using Altavista's Babel fish to to a quick rough translation, then going through and correcting the text. This time it was quite humorous. Babelfish's "translation" had lots of talk about decontaminating police forces! (This is because the word for police and the word for font are the same in French, even though they have different etymologies. Thanks to Jacqueline's husband for that history!) There are indeed limits to articial intelligence!
Merci à tous et à toutes pour vos remarques, aide et suggestions.
Je sens que je vais prendre beaucoup de plaisir à utiliser NeoOffice.
Pierre _________________ Pierre/Brest/Bretagne/France
PowerBook G4 1,5 Ghz/1 Go/160 Mo/Mac OS 10.4.8
NeoOffice 2.1
OpenOffice 2.1
Microsoft Word X Release 1
Seamonkey 1.1.1
Posted: Mon May 26, 2008 1:08 pm Post subject: similar problem - still no sollution
Hello,
I just changed from windows to mac and wanted to get rid of Microsoft Word. But I still have a similar problem to Pierre: NeoOffice does not recognize the "family-relation" of my fonts. And not only times and arial (which I tend not to use anyway) but all of my fonts. A click on bold or italic in the programm does not change the font to bold or italic. For bold nothing happens, for italic it puts the letters into a slant but does not use the real italic font (which in case of most fonts is not just sloping regular)
I realiesed that the fonts work fine in openoffice org 3.0 beta and in the sun office 8 preview for mac as well as in apple aplications like keynote. I would have switched to openoffice or sunoffice but they have other bugs (for example they do not hyphenate although I installed the respective packages).
I could work around by selecting for each phrase I want to have in bold or italic the respective special font. But beside it realy sucks to do that every time it makes the file not compatible with other programs like MSword. Even the regular font of a documet from neooffice is not recognized by f.e. MSword. And I have to interchange a lot with others working and reworking on a text.
I tried all that I found in this forum: deinstalling openoffice and staroffice, cleaning the dobbled fonts. I also tried to use the linotype font manager hoping that it might be a problem with the mac-font managment. When I disable a font like Pierre it just does not show up in the selection options in neooffice (or elsewere).
So if anybody knows help, please share your solution with me - otherwise I have to switch back to MS word which seems to work fine with the fonts.
Which NeoOffice version and patch are you using? The current version is NeoOffice 2.2.3 Patch 4.
Also, which fonts are you trying to bold or italicize? I ask because you say that NeoOffice is "faking" italics. I can assure you that NeoOffice does no such faking of bold or italics so if you are seeing any slanting, you are seeing a font's real slant.
In contrast to OpenOffice.org Aqua, if you are using a font that has no bold or italic variant, clicking on bold or italics will not create a fake bold or slant. So, if you want to use bold and italics, you need to check that there is actually a bold or italics variant of your font. Many Mac fonts do not have bold or italic variants. For example, Helvetica only has a bold variant and no italic variants.
You check if the font has bold or italic variants by clicking on the font list in the NeoOffice toolbar, scrolling to the current font that you are using, and checking if there is a font of the same name with "Bold", "Bold Italic", "Italic", "Oblique", or "Bold Oblique" at the end.
Posted: Mon May 26, 2008 1:48 pm Post subject: the fonts I use
Hello patrick,
I use the 2.2.3 patch 4 version of NeoOffice and I tested it with the Rotis Font Family and the Frutiger. As I said I can work around by selecting the specific font-style.
For example from MSWord I am used to selct RotisSemiSans and can change to bold or italic by shortcut respectivly a click on the "bold" or "italic" button. Only when I want another font-weight like extrabold or light I have to switch to another font by selcting the font.
In NeoOffice a dokument with the font "RotisSemiSans" is not recognized correctly. I have to select from the font-menue "RotisSemiSans 55". If I want to switch to bold "RotisSemiSans bold 65" and for italic "RotisSemiSans italic 56". As far as I know I can not handle this by a simple shortcut, at least for every font I have on the system. So it means more work, switching every time from the keybord to the mouse. But what is worse: when I sent a document to somebody working with MSword or another programm this program does not recognize the font because of the number after the name.
I have tried to installed the Linotype FontExplorer X and it does show the different styles in one font-family. In the selections of MSword 2004, keynotes, pages the fonts appear correctly as family. So I am almost shure that the Mac System itself (Mac OS 10.5.2 with lates updates some houres ago) recognizes the fonts correctly.
I hope this will help to detect the problem better.
Unless there is a free version of the Rotis fonts that I can download, I can only guess what might be happening. We use the standard Mac OS X font handling functions to find a font's italic and bold variants so I suspect that the Mac OS X fonts are tripping on this font.
To test my theory, open the /Applications/TextEdit application, type some text, and highlight the text. Then, change the font to your Rotis plain font by selecting the Format :: Font :: Show Fonts menu. Then, try italicizing the text by selecting the Format :: Font :: Italic menu. Does the text italicize properly? Next try bolding the text by selecting the Format :: Font :: Bold menu. Does the text bold properly?
One more question. if the text bolds and italicizes properly in the TextEdit application, can you try installing our latest test patch? The latest test patch fixes some Cyrillic and Eastern European font issues and maybe your font issue is caused by same bug.
I just made a pdf-file which shows my problem. The first three rows shows what happens if I use the "bold" and "italic" button. The last three rows what if I select the bold and italic fonts from the font-menu.
I understand that Mac does have a different font-handling, but the MSword for Mac at least do change the font-type to the real bold and italic style with the bold and italic short-cut resp. click on the icon. And hopefuly NeoOffice can do the same.
I will try the test patch. Does test-patch mean, that it may be instable? then it would be good if I could switch back after testing. Since I have to work productivly on my computer. Is that possible?
I understand that Mac does have a different font-handling, but the MSword for Mac at least do change the font-type to the real bold and italic style with the bold and italic short-cut resp. click on the icon. And hopefuly NeoOffice can do the same.
You did not tell us how the TextEdit application works as that is what NeoOffice models its font bold/italic matching from or if you tried the test patch. While I understand your desire to have MS Office be the standard, where there are differences we will use Apple's behavior as that is usually what Apple's font handling functions provide.
In contrast, MS Office uses its own proprietary algorigthm. The fact that Office cannot recognize a bold or italic font by its real name confirms this. Unfortunately, we do not have the funding nor engineers to reverse engineer MS Office's proprietary code. However, if the behavior is different than the TextEdit application's and you can get us free access to the font to debug any differences between TextEdit and NeoOffice, then we will definitely look at it.
Posted: Mon May 26, 2008 5:06 pm Post subject: test with textedit
Hi Patrick,
I did some experiments with TextEdit. It seems that TestEdit has similar problems with the RotisSemiSans Fonts. With the style-selector it doese not change anything for "bold" and for "italic" it switches to the light-italic style (46) instead of the regular italic stile (56).
With Frutiger and with Gill Sans it does not show these problems.
www.olafberg.net/fonttest-textedit.pdf
Than I tried the test in neooffice. it seems to work with frutiger and gil sans although the character spacing in some words is bad with frutiger (which does not happen in textedit and in word.
www.olafberg.net/fonttest-neooffice.pdf
Than I saved the neooffice file and imported it to TextEdit. First as an odt file. Now TextEdit did not recognize Rotis and Frutiger switching both to Times. Gill Sans it recognized, but it shows wrong styles. Interstingly it interprets the first three row block (marked by style button) the regular line as "fine" and the italic one as "fine-italic". The other block with selected styles from the font-menu is interpreted: regular to fine, bold to regular and italic to italic.
www.olafberg.net/fonttest-import-from-neooffice.odt.pdf
Than I saved the neooffice file in neooffice to the doc format for msword 97/2000/XP and opend this in TextEdit. The result was different again: This time the Gill Sans was interpreted in the second block (font-menu selected) bold as bold.
www.olafberg.net/fonttest-import-neooffice-doc-format.pdf
Than I opend the same file in word 2004 for Mac. While RotisSemiSans is still missinterpreted (although the font name is shown as rotis it is changed to what I consider Times). This time Frutiger is interpreted correct. And Gill Sans is correctly interpreted in the first part (where I changed "bold" and "italic" with the respective buttons). In the second part word can not interprete the font-names bold and italic and switches as with Rotis to Times font while still at least continuing to show italic as italic.
www.olafberg.net/fonttest-importtoword.pdf
Finally I tried to selct in word 2004 again the correct font-styles. It worked fine with Rotis and Frutiger. With Gill Sans I recognized (and that is maybe the reason for the misinterpreting of the Gill Sans) that word does not offer a bold and italic font for Gill Sans, but only for Gill Sans Std. (In NeoOffice I could select this for Gill Sans as well)
www.olafberg.net/fonttest-in-word.pdf
To me it is geting more and more weird with this fonts. But maybe it is just because her in Hamburg it is about 2 at night and I am realy tired.
I think I will go on testing the new patch tomorow.
Posted: Mon May 26, 2008 5:41 pm Post subject: Re: test with textedit
olafhamburg wrote:
I did some experiments with TextEdit. It seems that TestEdit has similar problems with the RotisSemiSans Fonts. With the style-selector it doese not change anything for "bold" and for "italic" it switches to the light-italic style (46) instead of the regular italic stile (56).
With Frutiger and with Gill Sans it does not show these problems.
Just as I thought: MS Office (and OpenOffice.org Aqua) are creating fake bold and italic versions of your RotisSemiSans plain font. This is why you thought NeoOffice (and TextEdit I assume) had the wrong italic angle: because MS Office is taking the RotisSemiSans plain font and slanting it at some hard-coded angle. In contrast, when you select the RotisSemiSans italic version in NeoOffice or TextEdit, you see the true slant angle that the RotisSemiSans font designers put in their font.
olafhamburg wrote:
Than I tried the test in neooffice. it seems to work with frutiger and gil sans although the character spacing in some words is bad with frutiger (which does not happen in textedit and in word.
Unfortunately, NeoOffice's underlying OpenOffice.org code has a nasty limitation that prevents accurate kerning of glyphs: OpenOffice.org rounds all glyph positions to the nearest whole pixel. So for example, when you have two glyphs that are each 0.75 pixels wide, the OpenOffice.org code will round these up to 1.00 pixels wide. Likewise, if two glyphs are each 1.25 pixels wide, the OpenOffice.org code will round them down to 1.00 pixels wide. This causes slight miskerning that is particularly noticeable when using smaller point sizes.
olafhamburg wrote:
Than I saved the neooffice file and imported it to TextEdit. First as an odt file. Now TextEdit did not recognize Rotis and Frutiger switching both to Times. Gill Sans it recognized, but it shows wrong styles. Interstingly it interprets the first three row block (marked by style button) the regular line as "fine" and the italic one as "fine-italic". The other block with selected styles from the font-menu is interpreted: regular to fine, bold to regular and italic to italic.
Don't worry about TextEdit's poor support for .odt files. This is a new feature that first appeared in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and, from what I have seen, their .odt support is fairly limited. At this time, the only applications that can really handle .odt is OpenOffice.org and derivatives like NeoOffice.
olafhamburg wrote:
Than I saved the neooffice file in neooffice to the doc format for msword 97/2000/XP and opend this in TextEdit. The result was different again: This time the Gill Sans was interpreted in the second block (font-menu selected) bold as bold.
www.olafberg.net/fonttest-import-neooffice-doc-format.pdf
Than I opend the same file in word 2004 for Mac. While RotisSemiSans is still missinterpreted (although the font name is shown as rotis it is changed to what I consider Times). This time Frutiger is interpreted correct. And Gill Sans is correctly interpreted in the first part (where I changed "bold" and "italic" with the respective buttons). In the second part word can not interprete the font-names bold and italic and switches as with Rotis to Times font while still at least continuing to show italic as italic.
www.olafberg.net/fonttest-importtoword.pdf
Finally I tried to selct in word 2004 again the correct font-styles. It worked fine with Rotis and Frutiger. With Gill Sans I recognized (and that is maybe the reason for the misinterpreting of the Gill Sans) that word does not offer a bold and italic font for Gill Sans, but only for Gill Sans Std. (In NeoOffice I could select this for Gill Sans as well)
www.olafberg.net/fonttest-in-word.pdf
To me it is geting more and more weird with this fonts. But maybe it is just because her in Hamburg it is about 2 at night and I am realy tired.
I would not worry more about this. You appear to be looking for what I call "pixel perfect" Word file handling in NeoOffice. Neither NeoOffice nor OpenOffice.org provide that. Instead, both import .doc files and convert them into .odt format. Then, when you save as .doc format, the OpenOffice.org code reconverts the .odt format back to .doc format. There is definitely some loss or change that will occur during those conversions and it is why when you first run NeoOffice or OpenOffice.org and you save in MS Office format, a warning dialog is displayed that you might see some loss in formatting data.
In other words, NeoOffice and OpenOffice.org are not perfect replacements for MS Office and if you use either, you should expect that your documents may render slightly different when opened and saved by either application.
If pixel perfect rendering of your documents is critical to your work, then you really should stick with MS Office. After all, you have already paid for it so why add the formatting losses of the NeoOffice/OpenOffice.org import/export process?
thanks for all your explanations. I learned a lot about how font-handling differs between Mac and Windows.
Maybe I have to stick with MSWord but still I would like to switch step by step to open source software. And I had a lot of trouble with the Word/Endnote combination on Windows Platform with big documents printing textrows double on the end of page or let one row disappear and misplacing footnotes. As this are konwn bugs from MSWord for many years I dont have much hope MS will change this behaviour. Friends told me OOo handling of large documents is much better. With the development of the Zotero Plug in for Firefox that integrates as well into openoffice and neooffice like Endnote do with MSWord, I hoped to have a real alternative that works. So I still hope to bring it to work fine with my favourit font-family.
If I finde a way I will post it on this side.
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(This is because the word for police and the word for font are the same in French, even though they have different etymologies. Thanks to Jacqueline's husband for that history!) There are indeed limits to articial intelligence!
