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Question

Some fonts that worked fine in Win 7 show missing characters

Sep 4, 2013 6:42PM PDT

I have a number of special fonts (all are .ttf) that I installed, and some that came with software for use with the programs. All of these fonts worked fine when installed on my Windows 7 64-bit computer.

I have installed all of these fonts on my Windows 8 64-bit computer, and some of the characters on the fonts do not show. Windows has substituted other characters in place of these.

Yet when I open the font in a third party program like Font Creator, all of the characters on the font appear true.

Is there a setting in Windows 8 that I need to adjust so the characters will show as they are supposed to?

Discussion is locked

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Answer
I had this happen.
Sep 5, 2013 1:20AM PDT

The cause was that there was no default printer. Not to dive too deep into how Windows works but it takes a printer installed and Windows checks with the printer to see if the font can be rendered there and if not, does a substitution.

This is all part of how WYSIWYG works so I'll shortchange you a lot on this one and keep it short.

Another element is the app. Notepad for example won't use such fonts.
Bob

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Not a printer issue
Sep 5, 2013 6:20PM PDT

A default printer was previously selected, so that is not it.

The font was designed for use in a particular program, and that program works fine in both Win 7 and Win 8.
All but 16 characters on the font work fine in both Win 7 and Win 8, but in Win 8, both Windows Character Map, and the program, do not see the 16 characters that were visible in Windows 7. Instead, in both those instances, when those characters are selected, default punctuation marks from a system font are substituted.

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Re: fonts
Sep 5, 2013 6:22PM PDT

If you can reproduce the issue on another Windows 8 PC, it's up to the author of the fonts to make a Windows 8 compatible version. Did you ask them already?

Kees

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Can be a printer issue.
Sep 5, 2013 6:36PM PDT

I wish we could sit down and discuss how the system works. I've had this discussion with many and only the folk that write code seem to get it the first time round.

But let's say you don't want to deal with that. I agree with Kees you have a fine support issue with it's maker.
Bob

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Re: font
Sep 5, 2013 6:46PM PDT

If charmap.exe doesn't work, I doubt if it's printer driver issue. That's just a basic program to select a character from a font.

The OP doesn't say what fontview.exe shows for this font. In Control Panel>Fonts right click on the font and choose Example. Again, I think it's basic Windows, not related to any printer driver (and wouldn't the default Microsoft XPS printer driver suffice)?

But it's strange that a third-party program (Font Creator) shows them if charmap.exe doesn't.

Kees

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Preview
Sep 5, 2013 11:57PM PDT

When I click on the Preview of the font it just shows as straight text. Apparently the font designer selected Arial to display the samples of the font.

The author of the font, by the way, has passed away a few years ago, so I can't ask him questions.

Perhaps there are some things about the font which I can examine using another software? According to Font Creator, the font was created by something called FontLab.(although I don't know which version.) I've never used FontLab but maybe there is a setting in that program that can be used to tweak the font?

I don't have access to another Windows 8 computer at the moment (all of my co-workers and friends have Windows 7 or Vista, or Mac computers.) So until I find someone else with Windows 8, that avenue of testing is not available.

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Then you take over.
Sep 6, 2013 1:05AM PDT

I see Fontlab has a forum and support at http://www.fontlab.com/

If the font file has something odd that Microsoft dropped in 8 we may never know. It's not that we didn't try here but the font file is not accessible to anyone but you so no member can take a stab at it or test it on their PC.

This many posts and it's starting to sound like a font file incompatible with Windows 8. I saw this back when Vista came out and the font authors did their work to correct that. But your new to Windows folk often think it's a Windows bug. I won't debate that but think of how it was solved in the past.
Bob

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Fontlab
Sep 6, 2013 10:16AM PDT

That is a good idea....the Fontlab forum. Hopefully they will chat with me even though I don't own their software. (I looked at the price.....it is rather expensive.)

If for some reason the font is incompatible with Windows 8, I suppose I could try and make a new font from scratch with the same characters, but it would be nice to know what about it was incompatible so I could avoid duplicating the problem.