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12 Replies Last post: Sep 16, 2009 12:28 PM by Be.eM  
leighstein User
leighstein
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Sep 15, 2009 4:12 PM

Cyrillic fonts in CS3 (on Mac)

I am trying to work on an InDesign CS3 document with type set in ComicSans and DejaVuSans. The book is in Russian, but the Cyrillic characters will not display. Empty boxes display in their place.

 

In Microsoft Word, I am able to write in Russian with both these fonts, so I assume there is a problem in InDesign. Is it a language setting? Preference? Any help greatly appreciated!

[Jongware] Contributor
[Jongware]
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1. Sep 15, 2009 4:19 PM in response to: leighstein
Re: Cyrillic fonts in CS3 (on Mac)

It is, actually, a problem in Microsoft Word. If you enter characters that are not in your current font, it silently switches to a font that does have them. (It's a great feature, but it's the "silently" I disagree with!)

 

If you select the pink boxes and change the font to one that does have Cyrillic glyphs, you should see your text is there. Try Myriad Pro or Minion Pro.

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leighstein User
leighstein
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2. Sep 15, 2009 4:21 PM in response to: [Jongware]
Re: Cyrillic fonts in CS3 (on Mac)

Actually, it does display in Word in the exact font (ComicSans), not a default. Hence the mystery! (And my frustration!) But thanks for your quick reply.

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[Jongware] Contributor
[Jongware]
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3. Sep 15, 2009 4:30 PM in response to: leighstein
Re: Cyrillic fonts in CS3 (on Mac)

(cough) Ah, I'm sorry -- I did find myself wondering why the DejaVu font did not contain Cyrillic! And I didn't think of checking for Comic Sans, but -- yes, it does contain them.

 

Perhaps something went wrong importing (or copying?) the text. If you select just one of the 'Russian' boxes, does the Info panel show its correct Unicode? It should be inbetween 0x400 and 0x4E9. If it's anything starting with 0xf0.., the font got translated wrong (0xf0.. is in the range for 'symbols').

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leighstein User
leighstein
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4. Sep 15, 2009 4:35 PM in response to: [Jongware]
Re: Cyrillic fonts in CS3 (on Mac)

Aha! It doesn't show it's Unicode at all. (I highlighted an English word that appears above it, and this came up with "Unicode" in the info panel, but not the Russian word.) Is there a way to convert the font to Unicode?

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[Jongware] Contributor
[Jongware]
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5. Sep 15, 2009 4:43 PM in response to: leighstein
Re: Cyrillic fonts in CS3 (on Mac)

It's not a font problem. Try this: open the Glyph panel and select "Myriad Pro". Scroll down to the Cyrillic set and double-click one of the characters to insert. This one should display a valid Unicode; and you should be able to change the font to DejaVu or Comic Sans.

 

How did you get the text into ID? Perhaps copied out of a PDF? That might be the problem.

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leighstein User
leighstein
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6. Sep 15, 2009 4:57 PM in response to: [Jongware]
Re: Cyrillic fonts in CS3 (on Mac)

I opened the glyph panel, changed to MyriadPro, doubleclicked to successfully insert character. You can see in the screenshot.

 

When I try to change that character back into ComicSans, though, it turns back into an empty box.

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[Jongware] Contributor
[Jongware]
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7. Sep 15, 2009 5:24 PM in response to: leighstein
Re: Cyrillic fonts in CS3 (on Mac)

Uh-oh. It might be a font cache related problem, and on that note that I'd be happy to leave it to Mac readers...

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Joel Cherney User
Joel Cherney
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8. Sep 15, 2009 5:36 PM in response to: [Jongware]
Re: Cyrillic fonts in CS3 (on Mac)

It needn't be a font cache problem, even. The last time I checked, MS stored its fonts in a spot that was inaccessible to both Indy and the OS. OP, in which folder is your Comic Sans located? Can you even set English type in InDesign in Comic Sans? If you can, then it's probably not a font cache problem, but a Cyrillic encoding problem. If you can't set type in English in Indy, but you can spot MS Comic Sans in a font folder readable by Indy... then it probably is some sort of font cache problem, and I've actually never had to solve one of those, so I will tell you to wait until someone who actually has problems with a Mac show up to answer your question.

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[Jongware] Contributor
[Jongware]
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9. Sep 15, 2009 5:41 PM in response to: Joel Cherney
Re: Cyrillic fonts in CS3 (on Mac)

Just FYI, under Windows, Comic Sans works just fine:

 

this-works.PNG

 

(Top is Myriad Pro, bottom Comic Sans.)

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Joel Cherney User
Joel Cherney
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10. Sep 15, 2009 7:13 PM in response to: [Jongware]
Re: Cyrillic fonts in CS3 (on Mac)

I think I figured it out by looking at your screenshot. Where it says "Box" in your screenshot - it's highlighted pink to show a dropped font, but it's actually displaying in Comic Sans, no? I'm guessing that there are multiple copies of Comic Sans installed on your machine. One of 'em doesn't have Cyrillic support. Search your entire HD and make sure you have only one such font installed.

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Joel Cherney User
Joel Cherney
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11. Sep 15, 2009 7:16 PM in response to: Joel Cherney
Re: Cyrillic fonts in CS3 (on Mac)

And you're working on some sort of Art Spiegelman project using Comic Sans? For shame. Comics nerds across the globe are crying out in pain.

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Be.eM User
Be.eM
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12. Sep 16, 2009 12:29 PM in response to: leighstein
Re: Cyrillic fonts in CS3 (on Mac)

leighstein wrote:

 

In Microsoft Word, I am able to write in Russian with both these fonts, so I assume there is a problem in InDesign.

 

Checking the Comic Sans MS font (installed with MS Office 2004 Mac) using PopChar, the font does not contain any cyrillic characters. I just did a test in Word 2004, and when changing the (working cyrillic) font to Comic Sans, only the Roman characters are displayed in this font. The rest stays as is.

 

So I'm wondering how you can write cyrillic characters in Word... are you really talking about Word on the Mac? Windows fonts often contain a different character set. Easy to see when you compare the "crippled" Arial installed with the Mac OS to the Arial that comes with Office or the Arial installed with Windows.

 

Bernd

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