Opentype/special characters

[Gust, Dieter]

> Message: 15
> Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2006 16:04:58 -0800
> From: "Dov Isaacs" <isaacs at adobe.com>
> Subject: RE: Opentype/special characters
> FrameMaker does not directly support the extended character sets
> available in many OpenType fonts. There are some registry hacks
> that can be performed to provide a "window" over other parts of
> the font, but such techniques are not supported or endorsed by
> Adobe AND can leave you with documents that are incompatible
> with future versions of FrameMaker!

I'm sorry Dov, 

what you call "registry hacks" are by no means any secret technology. Contrariwise they are an official(!) Microsoft Windows procedure to enable different character sets (derived from Standard(!) Windows code pages) from an OpenType font to Non-Unicode applications like FrameMaker. 
FontSubstitutes exist since Windows 3 and they still exist in Windows XP. Without this feature all FrameMaker users of the European Union would be forced to throw FrameMaker away, as FrameMaker then would not support about half of the European languages.

Microsoft did not document this feature or the documentation got lost in the Microsoft Web as now we live in the Unicode age. On the other hand the FontSubstitutes feature is an integral part of the RTF specification so almost every one dealing with translation in non-western languages had and has to do with this feature (we also call virtual fonts) even if he/she didn't knew this.

http://www.microsoft.com/truetype/links/News.aspx?NID=901
http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=http%3a%2f%2fwww.support.microsoft.com%2fkb%2f159594%2fen-us%2f

The link pointing to WGL Assistant (a non Microsoft solution) is wrong.
Here is the correct link: http://wgl.typ.pl/
There you'll find all information you need about FontSubstitutes and virtual fonts.

It's interesting that Adobe officially refuses to support this Windows standard existing since Windows 3. But we live now in the "Unicode age". We can hardly wait for Adobe to implement Unicode support into FrameMaker in order to forget what you called a "hack".

With regard to the question how to insert "less than or equal" without using the Symbol font the answer is: If that character would belong to an official Windows code page you could easily insert it in FrameMaker, but it isn't

For an easy insertion of any character into a FrameMaker document take a look at:
http://www.itl.de/html/englisch/consulting/fsl/solutions-3.html


Regards Dieter Gust
dgust at itl.de
itl AG
www.itl.de