Console errors (multiple, 60-some) -- "value of separation out of range"

[Misha_Ko]

I have a long, 128 page chapter.

I was getting a "font not found, substitute Times New Roman for MS Shell Dlg 2" console message when I

opened the file.

An online search turned up the suggestion that if you can't actually find the font in your doc, to get rid of it, saving the file as MIF, and opening

and re-saving to FM, might solve the problem. ("If the font isn't really there to begin with.")

It didn't work. The console error message from opening the MIF file says, **The "MS Shell Dlg 2" Font is not available. "Times New Roman"

will be used in this session.**

On top of which, that same console error window also has about 60 lines with a different numerical variation of:

MIF: "K:\Technical Publications Current Projects\00 yadda yadda filename.mif" (126817): Value of Separation out of range (11).

The messages are all the same, only the six digit numbers in parantheses change.

I'm on a (relatively) NEW Dell Precision T1500 box with 64 bit Win 7 & FM 9.0p255. All graphics in the file were imported by reference into

anchored frames from a "graphics n pix" folder in the same directory as the FM file.

....I don't know if this is really a problem or not, but the filie does take a heck of a long time to open, and there's

usually a paranthetical note in the window top bar, following the FM file name, that says Windows (not responding.)

Which goes away when the file does open. (In 2 or 3 minutes? Haven't put a stopwatch on it....)

This file is just one of many similarly sized docs, so I'm a little worried about what might happen when they're all collected

into the book file.

Any suggestions, info or advice would be much appreciated.

[Bob_Niland]

If the font name isn't found in the MIF, it's being invoked by one or more imported objects.

Candidate object types include ...

Graphical and mixed: EPS, PDF, DWG, DXF

Text (insets): FM, MIF, RTF, DOC, perhaps others

______

Can't help with the sep issue.

[Misha_Ko]

Thanks.If the font isn't found -- for whatever reason, in whatever kind of object -- could I do

a workaround by installing the missing font? In this case, MS Shell Dlg 2. (Whatever the

heck that is, assuming I can find it available somewhere.)

...Oops, wait, MS Shell Dlg 2 isn't really a font at all, here's what I found:

The following is an excerpt from the Microsoft   MSDN Library, April 2000:

“MS Shell Dlg is a mapping   mechanism that enables U.S. English Windows NT/Windows 2000 to support   locales that have characters that are not contained in code page 1252.   It is not a font but a face name for a nonexistent font. It can be specified   in either the Windows NT/Windows 2000 Setup file during the installation   process or when customizing a local system by double-clicking Control   Panel's Regional Options icon. When you double-click the icon, click the   Set default ... button in the General sheet of the Regional Options dialog   box. Select the appropriate locale in the Select System Locale dialog   box and click OK, then restart the system. The appropriate change occurs   in the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows   NT\Current Version\FontSubstitutes

A benefit of font mapping   in the registry is that you can change the font for the entire shell by   simply changing one .inf file entry. For example, localization for Asia   is much easier because you can change the .inf file entry, instead of   changing every instance of MS Sans Serif in every .rc and .dlg file, and   the change is complete without rebuilding any binaries. Win32-based applications   that contain multiple language resources that cross character-set boundaries   can also take advantage of this feature. It is also useful when you have   an English application in which supporting multiple languages and character   sets is important.

So in this case, the workaround is to find and change an ".inf file entry?"

[Bob_Niland]

Thanks. If the font isn't found -- for whatever reason, in whatever kind of object -- could I do a workaround by installing the missing font?

The optimal solution is to have the creator of the imported object either embed the font, or convert the text to outlines, and then re-save. Not all file formats support embedding, of course. EPS and PDF do.

Plan B is to install the missing font on your local machine.

Plan C, if the substitution is not causing a visible problem, is to either ignore it, or adjust your Frame font-mapping and Remember Missing Fonts options (which may or may not be helpful with some types of imported objects).

MS Shell Dlg 2 isn't really a font at all ...

What kind of objects are being imported that invoke this? (file format and content)

If I had to guess, I'd suspect they were hand-crafted recreations of localized dialog boxes, using real MS screen fonts. If so, chances are that "substitute Times New Roman for" is not ideal. You might set the Frame font map to substitute Arial.

[Misha_Ko]

RE: If I had to guess, I'd suspect they were hand-crafted recreations of localized dialog boxes, using real MS screen fonts.

Sorry? (  "Que?" the waiter Manuel used to say, furrowing his eyebrows, in the old TV  classic, "Fawlty Towers.")  I'm not writing software documentation.  There are no screen shot graphics. This is all text I've written, with graphic frames (jpegs, mostly, from DWG's, DWF's, and STP files, with some photographs) showing industrial packaging machinery.

...But I guess it's possible I was doing some online research, looking up a supplier's recommended guidelines, or whatever, and

cut and pasted a few words of text directly in to my doc. Without going through NotePad!

Oops.

Maybe that was it?

http://fsa.zedge.net/content/8/9/3/3/1-5623698-8933-t.jpg

[Bob_Niland]

... I guess it's possible I was doing some online research, looking up a supplier's recommended guidelines, or whatever, andcut and pasted a few words of text directly in to my doc.

That would show up as a visible (local override) font declaration in the MIF.

If you brought it in as a text inset (import by reference) from a .DOC or .RTF it would not be found in the MIF.

MS Shell Dlg 2

Due to the odd nature of this MS Registry hack, I'm wondering if that name, per se, would necessarily appear at all in the MIF.

[Misha_Ko]

Visible how? As far as I know, Ctrl + F doesn't list "font" in the drop-down selections, among the search categories.

I honestly don't know. Today was the first time I ever opened or used a MIF file since about the first or early second

term of the Clinton presidency.

I don't do text insets, so that's not a possibility.

I was just wondering what the "value of separation out of range" meant. Couldn't find much on it online.

[Bob_Niland]

Visible how?

Save the .FM file in MIF format to a file named .mif.

Open the .mif with a plaintext editor (Notepad will do).

Search for the string "MS Shell".

Examine the neighboring tags.

As far as I know, Ctrl + F doesn't list "font" in the drop-down selections, among the search categories.

A quick test of the Find dialog in Frame didn't seem to have any obvious way of searching for local font overrides by name. I'd be happy to be mistaken.

I was just wondering what the "value of separation out of range" meant. Couldn't find much on it online.

In your File > Print dialog, is

Print Separations

selected?

If not, I can't imagine what that alert might be related to.

[Misha_Ko]

Thanks, I THINK I found my offending font, after opening the MIF file in Notepad.

It looks like the offending text character is the "plus or minus" symbol in some adjustment

instructions, as in 'set protrusion to plus or minus twenty thousandth's of an inch.'

...I think I used the Windows Character map to find, select, copy and paste that from

the Symbolfont.

Is there a FM option for that character -- Ctrl Q + something, or esc + something?

...Anyway, the Separations option in "Print" is not selected. ....It does look greyed

out, though.

Much obliged for your help and patience with this.

[AxialInfo]

An excellent freebie utility for future viewing (viewing, not editing) MIF files is MIFBrowse  by Graham Wideman. Even though it hasn't been updated in umptyump years, it works with any version of MIF. It's here:

MIFBrowser

[Bob_Niland]

Is there a FM option for that character -- Ctrl Q + something, or esc + something?

[Ctrl]1

I would typically create a variable for it:

Name: char.symbol.plusminus

Definition: \xb1

or, on the odd chance that your narrative font doesn't have the glyph, or you want the typeface style to match other symbols, plusminus also exists in the TT and T1 "Symbol" fonts. Assuming you have a Character Format named "Symbol", the var would be:

Name: char.symbol.plusminus

Definition: <Symbol>\xb1<Default ¶ Font>

For future reference, see:

drive:\Program Files\Adobe\FrameMaker#.#\OnlineManuals

file: Character_Sets.pdf

That was at 7.0.

I don't have a 9.0 install handy to check at the moment.

_______

And yes, you can fake plusminus as "+" with an underscore, except in this forum

[Misha_Ko]

Thanks, Ctrl + Q, and then "1" (no shift key).

I'm so used to using that sequence the other way, with the

shift key (to make the degrees symbol) I forgot that you

have other combinations.

I also looked and found that there are separate character sets

for different versions of FM. (Or maybe the character sets are

the same, but the help files have been tweaked for each update.

I don't know.)

Typing "Framemaker character sets" in the online search window

turned up a list, with pdf hits at the Adobe site on top. A different

set for all 4 of the most recent versions of the application.

Thanks for your help, and Sheila's. Bookmarked the MIFBrowse

page.

[Bob_Niland]

> For future reference, see:

> drive:\Program Files\Adobe\FrameMaker#.#\OnlineManuals

On FM9, it's:

drive:\Program Files\Adobe\FrameMaker9\Documents

According to the Character_Sets.pdf there, the keyboard sequence Ctrl+q 1 was dropped at FM8. It's unclear if hex code \xb1 went with it.

I also looked and found that there are separate character sets for different versions of FM. (Or maybe the character sets are the same, ...)

Special character keystroke sequences were historically very different for Unix, Mac and Windows. In the past, the available characters might even have been different as well. Using hex codes in variables for these tended to minimize platform portability problems.

However, with FM8, Unicode took over. I haven't really looked into whether or not it would be wiser to use Unicode code points once we migrate off FM7.1. Obviously, these would not backport to FM7.x or earlier, should that be an issue.

[Michael_Müller-Hillebrand]

Just or the record:

Yes, if you copy and paste some characters from Windows’ Character Map utility you are likely to introduce as a side effect that ominous font. I seem to remember it helps to paste using Edit > Paste Special > Unicode Text.

- Michael

[Annie816-3EM69u]

I got the MS Shell Dlg 2" Font is not available.  "Times New Roman" will be used in this session."  error recently, running Adobe FM 10 on Windows 7. I tried all kinds of solutions even trying to edit the Windows registry for the MS Shell Dlg 2 font which did not correct the problem. As mentioned in this thread, MS Shell Dlg 2 is not really a font, and so I couldn't search for it in the files. FM would not build the book with this error in 2 of my chapter files. Finally my colleague suggested I deslect Remember missing font names in the FM Preferences with no files open, open each file, let FM substitute MS Shell Dlg 2 to use Times Roman, then save the files. On reopening, I no longer got the "

The "MS Shell Dlg 2" Font is not available.   "Times New Roman" will be used in this session." error.

[oracledba01]

a lot of great information here and yes, I'm seeing similar results to what others report.  It is suggested to tell FM to stop looking for missing fonts but that causes FM to lose the original font information in the document.  That might be ok, but folks should be aware of what is happening to their doc.

the MS Shell Dlg  and MS Shell Dlg 2 are face names used for mapping.  Depending on what Windows version you're using the referenced font is different.

To see what is installed on your machine get to a run prompt (window button + r) then type "control fonts" without the quotes.  That will show you what is installed on your machine.

To see what is being mapped to MS Shell Dlg and Dlg 2 get to a run prompt and type regedit (registry editor BE CAREFUL HERE)  go to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\Current Version\FontSubstitutes and review what font is being referenced

I'm on Windows 7 so MS Shell Dlg is MicroSoft San Seriff and MS Shell Dlg 2 is Tahoma