[UniMacTech] Symbols in Word on Mac and PC

[Tony Williams]

Peter,

The downside for most in using Doulos SIL (which does have all the Greek
characters - the Summer Institute of Linguistics are a thorough bunch) is
that when you send in your grant application the other end can't read it
unless they also have it installed or a copy of Word smart enough to drop
back to Lucida Sans Unicode rather than some other (non-Unicode) default
font. Lucida Sans Unicode is the only full Unicode font installed as part of
Office on both platforms. I recommend to users that they define a style that
does nothing but change the font to that.

// Tony

On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 10:04 AM, Peter Stagg <
Peter.Stagg at arts.monash.edu.au> wrote:

> >> Hi folks
> >> We have a user writing grant applications in both Word 2007 on a PC and
> Word
> >> 2007 on a MacBook but some of the symbols are disappearing when
> switching
> >> from on the other. If she uses the Greek Ï’, for example, in Word 2008
> then
> >> opens in Word 2007, the symbol is replaced with a box, and the same
> happens
> >> the other way, and for some other symbols, too. I have found a few
> threads
> >> on Google, but no real solutions, apart from using LaTex or PDF. The
> grant
> >> has to be submitted as a Word doc, apparently.
> >> Has anyone found a way around this?
> >> Thanks
> >> Al
> > Response from user-:
> > Al
> > I have done it in two ways.  The first was via “insert ->symbol†which
> was
> > how I had always done it.  These did a disappearing trick in the PC-Mac
> > exchanges. When I put them back in on the Mac by this process, they
> seemed
> > to be fine and had been writing away merrily when right before my eyes, I
> > saw word go through automatically and take them all out – quite odd.
>  Then I
> > went onto the word help for inserting symbols and it suggested using the
> > objects palette and select symbols.  This I diligently did, but when I
> open
> > on or send to a PC, these disappear too.  I thought Office had gotten
> over
> > compatibility problems.
> > Thanks
> > Jennelle
>
> Ok this is a font problem - the square box indicated the selected font does
> not have or is missing (never had to begin with - is corrupted and lost) the
> glyph inserted which isn't as bad a seeing a question mark take the place of
> the character you really want (this is trouble).
>
> The solution is make sure you use a *Unicode* font that is installed on
> both systems. Arial Unicode MS (not plane Arial) and Lucida Sans Unicode,
> form memory, are the two most complete Unicode fonts. There should be little
> or no difference between these fonts on the two platforms if they are from
> the same era (same release of office for Mac/PC). Make sure you don't inset
> characters from Non-Unicode/Symbols fonts (the old 256 character, TrueType,
> fonts) for example **Symbol**.
>
> For complete compatibility you can down-load a font like Douolus SIL from
> http://tinyurl.com/6ashzy for both systems. This font looks a lot like
> Times New Roman and contains all symbols required for the International
> Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and then some (not sure how complete its coverage of
> Greek Letters is but I'd be surprised if it didn't have all the glyphs you
> need).
>
> Remember also that fonts are a resource separate from the document. If you
> need to send the doc electronically its best to embed the fonts used in the
> document (look in the options panels) you can usually choose between
> embedding only the symbols you've used or the entire font. The first is
> preferable as Unicode fonts can be huge and the size of your document will
> blow out completely.
>
> --
> Regards,
>
> Peter Stagg
> Faculty Webmaster
> Arts Information Technology
> University AUC Representative <http://www.auc.edu.au/>
>
> Faculty of Arts
> Monash University, VIC 3800, Australia
> Building 11, Clayton Campus, Wellington Road, Clayton
> Telephone +61 3 9905 1221 Facsimile +61 3  9905 5117
> Mobile 0407 865 159
> Email peter.stagg at arts.monash.edu.au
> http://www.arts.monash.edu.au
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>


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