Opentype/special characters

[Dov Isaacs]

Dieter,

To be very clear ...

(1) I did NOT claim that these techniques were "secret."
Please don't put words in my mouth.

(2) By "registry hacks" I am referring to techniques that
although expedient, can lead to major problems in subsequent
parts of a workflow or in compatibility with other products
or even the same product in the future as well as transferring
documents using such techniques to other systems not-so
configured.

(3) As much as you and I and almost anyone else would love
to see FrameMaker fully Unicode and OpenType savvy, it
unfortunately isn't (and before any of you flame me publicly
or privately with hate mail, I have no control over that!).

	- Dov
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gust, Dieter
> Sent: Wednesday, March 01, 2006 1:38 AM
> To: framers at lists.frameusers.com
> Subject: RE: Opentype/special characters
> 
> > 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.c
om%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