[Solved] Not printing Greek characters

[gdd]

One of our printers (OCE CS171) does print an O instead of the greek ohm sign when this character is in pure Writer (Arial).

- Print preview is fine
- PDF export is fine
- An Ohm sign in a Math editor is fine (I assume this is a graphical mode print)
- This document saved as MS-Word 97, 2000, 2003 and printed by Word97 is fine too (this is a wrong signal guys ). This document is send to this printer by use of the same PC, so I use just one driver.
- Send to another type OCE printer (black and white instead of colour) the ohm sign is fine.

How to get all special characters printed as shown?

[acknak]

Have you read the Forum Survival Guide?
What OS and OOo version are you using?

Can you attach a sample document that shows this problem?

[gdd]

Sorry acknak. Now I add the basic information in my signature.

And here is a sample document. Print result will be "0,0294 O one Gen and 0,0147 O two Gen", but I am afraid you'll need a "sample" printerhardware too to see such behaviour.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Try using Letterlike symbol, Ohm Sign (U+2126 OHM SIGN) instead of U+03A9 GREEK CAPITAL LETTER OMEGA

[gdd]

Thanks Bhikkhu Pesela.

Indeed U+2126 prints fine, but it's very difficult to explain to our 250 end-users not to use Greek subset of characters, nor convert Word files to Writer.

Now a more detailled questions are possible:
Wat is the difference in these two sets of characters and how to make the Greek subset 100% printable?

[acknak]

I'm not sure what's going on--anything involving a .doc file is a big black hole.

Are you generating these documents in Writer, or in Word? If in Writer, why are you saving a .doc file?

My guess, at this point, is that your document specifies a special character from a particular Arial font file, which is not a standard Unicode omega and maybe not present in every Arial font file. E.g. the Arial file that I have has no Greek characters, nor an Omega symbol.

OOo tries to be smart about this: it will display both of the Unicode characters that B.P. identified even though my Arial doesn't contain them, but the fact is that there is no absolutely bulletproof way to insert special characters or symbols that is guaranteed to display (or print) everywhere, no matter what. The situation is even more unreliable when you mix two different word processors that handle these characters differently.

What I do is to stick to the standard Unicode characters (either of the ones that B.P. mentioned), and specify a font that's as common and consistent as possible that includes the character.

If you export to PDF, the needed fonts/characters should be embedded in the file, and that is far more portable than any word processor file.

[gdd]

Thanks acknak,

The document was partly made in Word97 and after conversion to Writer finished. The line concerning I've copied to a writer document (Writer to Writer). This document is saved as Word97,2000,2003 also. In these cases Writer has a problem, Word not.

As I understood the omega sign was added in Writer, but to be absolute sure I've created a new Writer document with the complete Greek characterset in Times New Roman and Arial. The problem does not exist now, so you are right about the black hole of MS conversion.

Btw Greek characters are available in (our) Arial 100%.

Please can you explain: what is de meaning of B.P. and how is the difference visible?

[acknak]

Good work! Sounds like you're on the right track.

Btw Greek characters are available in (our) Arial 100%.

See, that's part of the problem: the fonts evolve, but it's very difficult to know what you have or if it's up-to-date. You can have two systems, both of which have "Arial" installed, but one works and the other doesn't.

... what is de meaning of B.P. ...

Sorry, I was just being lazy. B.P. = Bhikkhu Pesala

[gdd]

Thanks again Acknak and B.P.

Cause is known. Never convert a Word document again is the solution

More serious converting Word documents give my headache now (because of our MS-history) and shall be important in the future (because of third parties who use MS-office)