Adobe Mathematical Pi OTF in MS Word

[_Ken_Blackwell_]

I've purchased Adobe's OpenType version of its Mathematical
Pi fonts. There were 6 Type 1 fonts originally. Now you can
buy an inexpensive d/l package of the 6 and an OpenType
version of them all rolled into one. It's called
Mathematical Pi LT Std.

As you can imagine, for the OTF the encoding of most characters has
changed. I looked at the OpenType file in InDesign and
found 689 glyphs (the package says 690, so I must have
miscounted).

Then I opened it in MS Word 2003 for Windows. The Symbols insert chart shows only
476 characters. Unaccountably, many of the missing ones are
in the fraktur, script, outline and bold Greek alphabets,
and they're especially weak in A through G, upper and lower case. These include characters that I used in the most recent issue of my journal.

Anyway, something seems to have gone wrong in
Word's encoding of characters from this font. You can
see the gaps in Unicode character codes in Word's Symbol insert.

Have others found a way to display in Word all of the Math Pi font
that InDesign displays? Is this is a recognized problem with this font or with other OTFs used in Word?

[_Adam_Twardoch_]

Ken,

Word is known for its buggy support of OpenType PS (.otf) fonts. Word XP didn't show any glyphs from OpenType PS fonts with codes higher than 256. This was addressed in Word 2003, but I suspect that some problems still exist. So your problem is not font-specific.

However, I think it would be practical if you posted some screenshots illustrating your problem. For instance, I don't quite understand what you mean by "they're especially weak in A through G".

Regards,
Adam Twardoch

[_Ken_Blackwell_]

Adam, I've made a screenshot of the total view from Word 2003 of the glyphs in Math Pi LT Std Regular but don't see a way to attach it in this forum. I hope to learn soon!

The u/lc Greek alphabet is less incomplete than the outline, script and fraktur or gothic alphabets. Each one is missing most of its characters. It would be better to say that these alphabets are randomly and skimpily represented throughout.

I've viewed several other OpenType fonts in Word's Symbol insert chart, including a couple of pro fonts, and nothing seems amiss in them, at least not radically. I wonder if the Math Pi lapse has anything to do with math having unusual subsets.

[_Ken_Blackwell_]

I'd appreciate advice on whom to write to at Microsoft regarding the inadequacy of Word 2003's encoding of the Math Pi OpenType font. It's pretty much useless to me in its abbreviated implementation.

[_Adam_Twardoch_]

Ken, <br /><br />I suggest Chris Pratley <chrispr@microsoft.com> and Paul Nelson <paulnel@microsoft.com>. <br /><br />Regards, <br />Adam Twardoch

[_Brian_S__Du_Bois_]

Does anyone know if WordPerfect handles the named opentype fonts, listed in this post, correctly? If so, this is one of many reasons to reconsider WordPerfect again. I have been using it since 4.1 and I refuse to switch to Word.

Thank you for your assistance.

[_Ken_Blackwell_]

Brian,

I have investigated OpenType fonts in WP for Windows. WPWin is not wise to Unicode. It continues to use the 256 encodings it has always used. Over at wpuniverse.com, there have been discussions of what would have to be done to make WPWin unicode-compatible: a lot, very unfortunately.

Thus I stick with 5.1 for DOS for my unit's typsetting, which makes use of expert fonts (o.s. numerals, true small caps, and 5 automatic ligatures that we've coded into the Postscript printer driver) and which involves a lot of logical symbols from Mathematical Pi 1 to 6. I needed Pi 1 to be available both regular and slanted. No problem, thanks to good old ptr.exe.

Ken