Re: Font not displaying in Frame

["Thomas Michanek" <thomas.michanek@xxxxxxxxx>]

> Now, on these two computers it will not display in FrameMaker (or Word for
> that matter) the ZapfDingbats font (Type 1) properly. It instead displays
> the Wingdings font (Open type native to Win2000). The font will print
> properly and can be seen properly in the Character Map and font sample
> display, but when called though a program is substituted by Wingdings.

This problem is addressed in one of the top issues in Adobe's
User-to-user forums for FrameMaker:
"UPDATE (2001-11-16) Windows 2000/XP Zapf Dingbats Display Problem"

I'm not sure how this relates to your particular situation, but it's
probably a printer driver issue. The text says:
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There is a known problem under Windows 2000 and Windows XP (all flavours)
in which characters chosen from the ITC Zapf Dingbats font, one of the
"base 35" PostScript Type 1 fonts, display in the TrueType WingDings font 
on the screen, but print OK to PostScript printers and generate correct 
PDF files. A similar problem occurs with Carta and any other Type 1 symbol 
fonts (other than the actual font "Symbol") that might be resident in the
PostScript printing device (as defined in the printer's PPD file) and also
installed on an end-user's computer system. 

(Obviously, if a font is printer-resident but a copy of that font is not
 installed at all on an end-user's computer system, characters in that
 font will not display correctly!) 

This problem affects many but not all applications. These applications in 
which the problem occurs appears to include many applications which use 
Windows 2000/XP's font rendering services as opposed to applications which 
internally control their own fonts. The applications affected include 
FrameMaker, Microsoft Office, and Lotus Smartsuite, amongst others. 
No other Adobe applications are affected being that they control and 
manage their own font services. 

Adobe is aware of the problem. The cause of the problem is a mismatch 
between how the OS font rendering system and the PostScript driver "see" 
what are ostensibly the same fonts. Unfortunately, a short term driver/OS 
fix are not forthcoming. 

A VIABLE WORKAROUND 

The following is the best known workaround that effectively solves the 
problem in a manner that would be compatible with any future fixes issued 
by Adobe and/or Microsoft: 
(1) Logon as "Administrator" or with a user ID that has administrator
 privileges. 
(2) Make sure no printing is occurring or spooled to any PostScript
 printer and close all regular applications. 
(3) Go to directory "C:\WINNT\system32\spool\drivers\w32x86\3". 
(4) For each .PPD file in that directory: 
(a) Copy the PPD file to a backup location in case you need to subsequently
 retrieve a pre-modified version. 
(b) Open the PPD with an ASCII text editor, such as "NotePad". 
(c) Find the line in the PPD file that begins "*Font ZapfDingbats:" 
(d) Change the initial "*Font" in that line to "*% Font" 
(e) Save the PPD file and exit the text editor. 
(5) Delete all the .BPD files in directory
 "C:\WINNT\system32\spool\drivers\w32x86\3". 

The PostScript driver will then recreate the .BPD files as necessary from
the edited PPD files. Note that with this solution, you do NOT need to 
delete and recreate the printer instances. This hackery is only a Windows 
2000 and XP solution. The problems mentioned above do not occur with 
Windows'9x or Me. 

FURTHERMORE 

I PERSONALLY recommend that at stage (4)(c-d) above, you change ALL the 
lines that begin with "*Font" to "*% Font" with the exception of the one 
line that begins with "*Font Courier:", 
Why? Because this effectively tells the driver and operating system to 
always use the fonts resident on your computer system as opposed to those 
which may be ROM or disk-based in your printing device. 

And why is that important? Two reasons: 
(1) We continually hear about problems in which users compose documents 
with fonts that appear in the list of available fonts but surprisingly 
enough, fail to be recognized or embedded when creating PDF files. This 
problem is caused by the fact that the operating system in conjunction with 
the driver allows on-host access for formatting purposes to fonts that are
printer-resident, even if they cannot be really accessed or displayed on 
your computer because they are not actually installed on your computer! 
When you "switch" to the Acrobat Distiller printer instance, the fonts 
seem to "disappear." Well, they weren't really there to start with. 
This "fix" eliminates the "phantom phonts" and the problems associated 
with same. 
(2) Over time, changes have occurred in fonts, especially in the size and
content of their character sets. The best example of this is the addition 
of the Euro symbol into many Type 1 fonts that can also be "printer resident."
In some cases, such as the Arial and Times New Roman families, the fonts 
being shipped with Windows 2000 / XP each have over 1000 more character 
definitions (from multiple alphabets and symbols) than the equivalent 
printer-resident fonts in PostScript 3 implementations and some PostScript 
Level 2 emulations. This fix forces use of the host-based font when printing 
and thus virtually eliminates the possibility of missing characters on 
output due to font mismatches. 

Note that it is critical that you DON'T change the line for Courier. The 
driver appears to "die" if it doesn't have at least one printer-resident 
font to chew on and Courier is the font that will likely cause you least 
grief with any of the two issues above. 

- Dov 
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Thomas Michanek, FrameMaker/UNIX/MIF expert
Technical Writer, Uppsala, Sweden
mailto:Thomas.Michanek@telia.com
http://go.to/framers/
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