[Solved] Symbol font problem opening odp created under Linux

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tdt
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[Solved] Symbol font problem opening odp created under Linux

Post by tdt »

Hi,

I'm having a problem moving odp files created under Linux OO3 Impress to the OS X versions. When I create/save an Impress file (odp) that contains Symbol font characters, they do not open properly under OO3 for OS X. I've tried the latest OO3 beta version with the same problem.

I've attached an odp file containing a single slide with three "delta" characters on it. Under the latest Linux version, everything is fine. If I open it under OS X, the delta characters get imported as some weird "swirl" character. I saw a posting relating to this involving presentations imported from ppt, but ppt is not involved in my case.

Could someone try this on their installation of OO3 for OS X?

Any help on this would be much appreciated.

Thanks,
Terry
Attachments
deltasymbols.odp
Single slide containing some symbols.
(9.97 KiB) Downloaded 914 times
Last edited by Hagar Delest on Fri Oct 09, 2009 9:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: tagged [Solved].
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Hagar Delest
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Re: Symbol font problems opening odp created under Linux

Post by Hagar Delest »

Does it help: [Solved] Bullet Point Characters Incorrect?

Thanks to add '[Solved]' at beginning of your first post title (edit button) if your issue has been fixed.
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tdt
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Re: Symbol font problems opening odp created under Linux

Post by tdt »

Hi,

I had read through these before I posted my question. It seemed to me that the issue under discussion there had to do with the improper tagging that symbols had when the document was originally created under MS ppt. Unless I missed something, this is not the case for me. I'm creating the odp file using OO3 (under Linux), then opening it using OO3 (under OS X). The Symbol font is available in OO3 under both platforms and I can add the desired symbols to the OS X-opened version of the document no problem, i.e., in OS X I can put symbols into the document but when opening the one created under the Linux version, there is a problem.

Thanks,
Terry
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Hagar Delest
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Re: Symbol font problems opening odp created under Linux

Post by Hagar Delest »

You're right, I read your post too quickly and didn't noticed you were only using .odp.

It's fine also under W2k. Perhaps it's a problem with the system font with Mac (differently encoded my MS for Mac)? Have you tried with OpenSymbol?
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tdt
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Re: Symbol font problems opening odp created under Linux

Post by tdt »

Hi,

So sorry for the delay in responding.

I haven't tried any other fonts. But it seems that this problem is with OO Version 3 since I've never had any problem moving odp files between Linux and OS X platforms with earlier versions of OO. But with OO3 things are not working well enough for OO to be useful to me. On OS X various fonts (which appear fine under Linux) also appear with the wrong size, etc.

I'm wondering if anyone out there has tried reading the odp file I posted above into OO3 for OS X????

Thanks,
Terry
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Hagar Delest
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Re: Symbol font problems opening odp created under Linux

Post by Hagar Delest »

You can try to report it and attach your file: [Tutorial] Reporting bugs or suggestions.
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Re: Symbol font problems opening odp created under Linux

Post by acknak »

When you use Insert > Special Characters, you insert a character that's tied to a specific font. If the presentation is opened on a computer that does not have that font available, OOo will try and find a substitute font that can supply the character. That works fairly well for standard characters: most fonts have a recognizable letter "A" shape at the same position.

In fact, this works fairly well for a great many characters, as long as the character you insert is a standard Unicode character. Any Unicode font that provides the letter δ (U+03b4) can be substituted for any other Unicode font and you'll still get something that's recognizable as a Greek lower-case delta.

Unfortunately, your document contains the delta from a specific font ("Symbol") that is not a Unicode font. So, you either have to have the Symbol font installed, or OOo finds some other font that has something at position U+03b4. Since that position is not standard, you may get some entirely different character.

It's better to insert standard Unicode characters whenever possible, and don't select characters from a specific font: just leave the font selector the same as the surrounding text.

Here's your sample document that also shows the deltas in standard Unicode. They should work correctly on almost any system.
Attachments
deltasymbols_edit.odp
(12.16 KiB) Downloaded 795 times
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tdt
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Re: Symbol font problems opening odp created under Linux

Post by tdt »

Dear acknak,

Thank-you very much for explaining this to me! My main problem is that I have a large number of ppt files which were generated by someone else using MS ppt. So unfortunately I have no control over what fonts were used when they were generated. I guess my best option is to install those fonts, such as the Symbol font, under OS X. Would you know where best I could find it?

Thanks again,
Terry
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acknak
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Re: Symbol font problems opening odp created under Linux

Post by acknak »

I expect all you need is the font file. The one on my Linux system is just named "Symbol.ttf" but frankly I've forgotten where it came from. I think it's commonly installed with Windows application software (MS Office?), so you can try a file search on any Windows system.

Just be aware that this does not solve the problem. You'll keep having to fiddle around with this font as long as you have documents that use it.

One way to actually fix it is to use Edit > Find & Replace to replace the font-specific characters with standard Unicode characters. Unfortunately, you would also have to remove the specific Symbol font formatting, which can be problematic in Impress, and the Find/Replace has to be repeated for each different symbol used in the document. That may be more trouble than messing with the font.
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wojciechwasko
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Re: Symbol font problems opening odp created under Linux

Post by wojciechwasko »

There is a much simplier solution provided you have symbol.ttf from MS Office

Just backup the opensymbol font:
cd /usr/share/fonts/truetype/openoffice/
mv opens___.ttf opens___.ttf.bak

than make a dir where you will keep you 'own' fonts (this may be different on suse)
mkdir /usr/share/fonts/truetype/myfonts/

copy the MS Office symbol.ttf font file to that directory
cp /path/to/symbol.ttf /usr/share/fonts/truetype/myfonts/

and create a symlink to that font
ln -s /usr/share/fonts/truetype/myfonts/symbol.ttf opens___.ttf

Of course you could store symbol.ttf as opens___.ttf in the openoffice font directory but it's not as "elegant" and if you use this trick, you may very quick get lost with all your fonts.

Hope that helped ;)
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Re: Symbol font problems opening odp created under Linux

Post by wojciechwasko »

actually it is not a perfect solution - which i just found out. MS Office symbol font is ok for greek symbols but confuses mathematical operators, for instance "=" is replaced with a small cross and so on... I'll see into that issue..

Sorry for the false alarm xD
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tdt
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Re: Symbol font problems opening odp created under Linux

Post by tdt »

Dear wojciechwasko,

Thanks a lot for your posting! The problem I'm having is under OS X rather than Linux, but I was able to use your suggestions. As you suggested, I used Microsoft symbol.ttf and linked the openoffice symbol font filename to it. This is in /Applications/OpenOffice.org.app/Contents/basis-link/share/fonts/truetype/.

However, to get things working I had to go into Fontbook and remove the symbol font that is native to OS X. After that, everything seems to be working fine and all the symbols are appearing as they should. However, I'm wondering if other applications which may use or have used the MAC symbol font will somehow be broken.

Thanks!
Terry
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amaloney
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Re: Symbol font problems opening odp created under Linux

Post by amaloney »

I too have a problem with the Symbol typeface in OOo, Writer to be specific.
It shows in the list of Fonts but, when selected, Symbol characters do not show in the document.
In Mac OS X it is installed as Symbol.dfont in /System/Library/Fonts.

Is it being suggested that one obtain Symbol.ttf from somewhere and install it in /Library/Fonts or ~/Library/Fonts?
Would that solve my problem?
If so, where does one obtain Symbol.ttf?
------------
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Re: [Solved] Symbol font problem opening odp created under L

Post by marksman »

I should mention that OOO on MacOSX also fails to read symbols in documents produced on Windows using MSWord & Excel (and presumably also OOO) for the same reason: the fact that many fonts on Mac are in Datafork files (.dfont), which contain the relevant information in a way that some programs cannot access .

The file installed on MacOSX 'Symbol.dfont' actually contains Symbol.ttf. To get at it, you'll need to download a program called Fondu:

http://fondu.sourceforge.net/

This requires you to use Terminal to install it, but it's fairly painless. In case you (or any other people with the same problem) are not familiar with how Terminal works, i'll give a brief explanation of how to do what you need to do. I prefer to explain what the instructions mean rather than just give a list of random words and symbols, I would have learned this stuff a lot quicker if that's what everyone did :)

Download the package, unpack it, and move the folder "fondu" to your home folder. Then open the Terminal in your applications folder and change the directory in which Terminal locates itself: this is done with 'cd' followed by the path (you must press return/enter after typing in any Terminal command to execute it), i.e. since you should have put 'fondu' in your home folder it's just:

cd fondu

Then:

./configure && make

Once the Terminal's finished this (i.e. once it stops spitting gobbledegook onto your screen) use:

sudo make install

Once you've given your password the program should install quickly. Now you need to apply fondu to the Symbol.dfont file, which you'll find in the directory /Library/Fonts/ (this is the root Library directory found if you double click on your hard drive, not the one in your home directory) , so change to this directory, and apply fondu to get the .ttf file:

cd /Library/Fonts
fondu Symbol.dfont

Now if you go to /Library/Fonts/ in Finder you should have a Symbol.tff file, the original .dfont plus a few others that you don't need called Symbol-12.bdf and things like that. Delete all the Symbol-<some-number>.bdf files and move the Symbol.dfont file somewhere else, doesnt matter where, just out of the Fonts folder. Best to keep it just in case :) Now you need to install the .ttf file into OpenOffice, folowing the instructions from wojciechwasko and tdt. Neither have given the correct method for MacOSX explicitly, so here are the commands you need to give terminal, i've put an explanation in brackets above each one (don't type the bits in brackets!):

(change to the OOO fonts directory)
cd /Applications/OpenOffice.org.app/Contents/basis-link/share/fonts/truetype/

(change the open-symbol font file's name so you have it as a back up; NB: "___" is THREE underscores in a row)
mv opens___.ttf opens___.ttf.bak

(make a new directory for your own fonts)
mkdir myfonts

(move the Symbol.ttf file to this directory)
mv /Library/Fonts/Symbol.ttf myfonts/Symbol.ttf

(link Symbol.ttf to the open-symbol font file, i.e. trick OOO into opening the MS Office Symbol font instead of it's own)
ln -s myfonts/Symbol.ttf opens___.ttf

That should be it. This method worked for me in any case. You wont be able to run Microsoft Office with the Symbol font, but who cares? Now OOO works perfectly! (Almost perfectly.) As an added bonus, equations produced on MSWord with Equation Editor will now be mostly legible in Writer, although with a few tricky ones (such as those that contain integral signs) you need to resort to double clicking on them to sort em out.

Many thanks to wojciechwasko and tdt for describing how to solve this problem.

Regards,
Mark
OOO 3.2.0 on MacOS Leopard 10.5.8
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