'Symbol' font not displaying in imported .doc files

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sbj00
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'Symbol' font not displaying in imported .doc files

Post by sbj00 »

Hi,
When I open a .doc file which should have a number of greek letters (presumably from the symbol font), they display as some very strange symbols - sort of like wingdings stuff (i'll try a copy and paste here: ) - but if i highlight them the Font box stays the same as the rest of the text (Times roman, arial etc) - suggesting they've been changed to match the main text on import(?).

I can change them to the intended greek letter by highlighting the strange symbol and going through the Font dropdown and selcting 'Symbol'...so this font exists on my computer. Why is it not being correctly displayed when I open the document, and how can I make it default to this?

Thanks

(OOo 3.3.0, Win XP, MSOffice not installed)
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aqualung
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Re: 'Symbol' font not displaying in imported .doc files

Post by aqualung »

Hello and welcome to the forum!
sbj00 wrote:sort of like wingdings stuff (i'll try a copy and paste here: )
I'm not seeing wingdings, but two rectangular boxes; one says "FO 44", the other "FO 79" in tiny letters.

If it's Times New Roman or Arial -- both of which include the Greek alphabet -- then any Greek letters should stay the same when you convert from .doc to .odt. When using the TNR or Arial font in OpenOffice, Greek letters can be inserted via Insert > Symbol and then choosing the special (Greek, or whatever) characters that you want to insert. I think that's basically how it works in Microsoft Word, too.

When using the Symbol font, typing "abc def" gives the lower case Greek letters "alpha beta gamma delta epsilon phi" (spelled out here to avoid any display problems). So that is what you want, but you aren't getting it.

It would be helpful to know what font Microsoft Word shows for the Greek letters when the file is opened in Word, but as you don't have that on your computer... Any chance you can ask the author of the document what font the Greek letters were formated in originally?
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sbj00
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Re: 'Symbol' font not displaying in imported .doc files

Post by sbj00 »

thanks aqualung.

yes, i also see FO44 and FO79, but in the document they are different symbols - a strange squiggle and a box with a ^ inside, respectively. if i copy and paste the text into Wordpad (MS free word processor) the symbols are identified as Wingdings Symbol. But if I look through the character map for wingdings (or webdings, or TNR or Symbol) in OO I can't find anything to match what I'm seeing on screen.

screenshot here:
aRSKo.png
aRSKo.png (6.74 KiB) Viewed 21805 times
the highlighted section has four of these symbols - a bold X, a black square and the two mentioned above. they should look like some of the greek letters in the formula at top. i imagine they were all input as TNR, using the special character insert tool you mentioned.

but does anyone know why they are not being displayed correctly in OO? I just open as .doc to read, not saving as odt or anything. I'll try opening with Word on a different machine sometime and see what happens then.
Thanks for your help, any further suggestions welcome...
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aqualung
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Re: 'Symbol' font not displaying in imported .doc files

Post by aqualung »

Thank you for posting the screenshot, that makes it a bit clearer.

My initial guess would be that the author was using either the Mathematics Add-In for Word from Microsoft or the MathType plugin (Lite or full-featured) for MS Word from DesignScience, Inc.

MathType advertises itself as cross-platform, but even so incompatibilities may occur. Or it could be that the author used the mip.exe Windows tool for entering equations, or something else entirely. (Maybe it was LaTeX before it was Word!)

I have both MathType Lite and Mathematics Add-In installed in my copy of Word 2007. When I have some time tomorrow, I will experiment a bit to see if I can reproduce your experience. (In your screenshot, the first [funnysymbol] [subscript bracketed x] were rho [subscript bracketed x], I presume. What about the other "funnies", can you tell me which parts of the equation they correspond to?
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Re: 'Symbol' font not displaying in imported .doc files

Post by aqualung »

So, I attempted to recreate the equation and part of the text below it in my Word 2007, first using Microsoft's Mathematics add-in, then using the MathType Lite plugin from Design Science. (I find MathType easier to use and more flexible in controlling the look of the equation.)

Saved them both to .doc (Microsoft Word 97 / XP / 2003) format.

Then opened them in Writer. Both files display fine on my system, no funny squiggles in place of Greek characters.

I attach the two Word files and the two .odt files that I saved from Writer.

Please let me know if they work o.k. on your system. If they do, then the problem most likely is on the end of the author who sent them to you. If they do not, then we need to investigate further.
Attachments
Test1MathematicsAddIn.odt
Writer (from Word using Mathematics Add-In)
(15.04 KiB) Downloaded 471 times
Test1MathType.doc
Word (using MathType plugin)
(21 KiB) Downloaded 452 times
Test1MathematicsAddIn.doc
Word (using Mathematics Add-In)
(44 KiB) Downloaded 433 times
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Re: 'Symbol' font not displaying in imported .doc files

Post by aqualung »

Only three files can be uploaded at a time, so here is the fourth.
Attachments
Test1MathType.odt
Writer (from Word using MathType plugin)
(13.76 KiB) Downloaded 418 times
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Re: 'Symbol' font not displaying in imported .doc files

Post by sbj00 »

Thanks again for your efforts. All four of those files display the correct symbols (rho and gamma) in the text portion.

I opened the .doc file on a machine with Word earlier - instead of the symbols in my screenshot above, it displayed empty rectangles. However, the desired information of what greek symbol should be there must be somewhere, because if i change the font of these rectangles (which all look the same on screen) to 'Symbol' they display as they should - rho, gamma etc.

(The two symbols at the end of the highlighted text are delta and capital psi).

So it seems the info as to what symbol is intended is in the doc somewhere, but for some reason it's getting changed to some very strange objects. This is the puzzling thing for me - if OO simply didn't recognise and was substitiuting a 'best guess' that would be one thing, but these symbols only need changing from TNR to Symbol font.

Would you agree it's likely to be the author using a different method of input? It's possible it's a LaTex -> Word conversion, that could introduce an issue.

I've attached a file with the text in - perhaps you could try opening and see what happens?
test1.doc
(11 KiB) Downloaded 545 times
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aqualung
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Re: 'Symbol' font not displaying in imported .doc files

Post by aqualung »

Okay, you left out the equation this time. In Word 2007, I see the empty rectangles and when I change the font to Symbol, the right Greek characters are displayed. In Writer this time, there are entirely different "funnies". For example, the rho becomes something that looks like a triple quote mark. Again, changing the font to Symbol gives the right Greek characters.

As for what is the cause of this problem in the source document, I am stumped. That it might be something to do with a prior conversion from LaTeX was just a guess. Unless someone else jumps into this thread with some bright idea, I'm afraid that I can only repeat my suggestion of talking to the author.

At least we ruled out imperfect conversion by Writer as the cause, so I'm hoping this discussion has been somewhat helpful.
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Re: 'Symbol' font not displaying in imported .doc files

Post by sbj00 »

much appreciated, aqualung. i'll try and find out how the original text is being input.

meanwhile, does anyone else have any idea how i can make these symbols manifest correctly?
is there a way of viewing the raw data to see what the word processor (Writer/Word) is reading into the document?
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Re: 'Symbol' font not displaying in imported .doc files

Post by acknak »

If you really want to know, I can try to explain it, but the bottom line is the same as ever: it's mangled because MS can do whatever it likes. If you stick to using their software, everything will work fine. If you want to go "outside the fold", anything can happen.
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paulbuer
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Re: 'Symbol' font not displaying in imported .doc files

Post by paulbuer »

Microsoft recycles character values in all fonts, but Symbol and Wingdings are having inconsistency issues. For instance:
1) ChrW(61537) in font Symbol is "Greek small alpha"; while in Wingdings is equivalent to "Cancer sign".
2) ChrW(61607) in font Wingdings is "Black small square"; while in font Symbol is "Black Club Suit".

I created a macro to search and repair incorrect character usage in a document, like changing Greek characters with font Symbol to their correct form and value in normal text. For instance, "Greek small alpha" (Symbol) which has a value of ChrW(61537) will be replaced to "Greek small alpha" (Times New Roman) which has a value of ChrW(945). Same for Wingdings. If you want it, just email me: paulbuer.at.yahoo.dot.com
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Re: 'Symbol' font not displaying in imported .doc files

Post by John_Ha »

It is worth remembering that the font name shown in the Writer Font box is the font which the document is calling for. If your PC does not have that font installed, Writer? Windows? silently substitutes an available font and uses the substitute to display the document. The addon TestFonts is an invaluable aid to identify the fonts being called for in a document and which, if any, are missing.

Second, what happens if you open the document in the free Microsoft Word viewer and copy and then paste the contents into Writer - is it better?
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See the Writer Guide, the Writer FAQ, the Writer Tutorials and Writer for students.

Remember: Always save your Writer files as .odt files. - see here for the many reasons why.
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Re: 'Symbol' font not displaying in imported .doc files

Post by paulbuer »

This is what you said and sampled in your above post: "i'll try a copy and paste here: "
- The left character you provided has a unicode name of Symbol 68 with a unicode value of ChrW(61508) in Font "Symbol".
- The right one has a unicode name of Symbol 121 with a unicode value of ChrW(61561) in Font "Symbol".

Your client, just by looking at the appearance of those characters in the "Insert Symbol" dialog, inserted a Greek capital letter Delta (left) and Greek small letter Psi (right) in the category Font: Symbol. Why? Because some believe that Greek characters are Symbols, and so they must be in Font Symbol; when in fact there is an appropriate and equivalent Greek characters in normal text (Times New Roman, Arial, StixGeneral, etc). What he did will create future errors. For instance, after editing he decided to change the font name of the entire document to "Times New Roman". What do you think will happen to those Greek characters in Font Symbol? Try to do this and see the result. Try to select and change the "Font Symbol" Greek character to any font you want in the Font box or see the result as you change font one by one.

In terms of flexibility and compatibility, Font Symbol must not be an option to use. Why? Because it has issues. And if your just going to find and replace these "Font Symbol" characters using their visual appearance (not defining the Font used in the search criteria), you might end up replacing them to absolutely different "Font Wingdings" characters. Why? Because in terms of unicode values, Font Symbol and Wingdings share some of those values in totally different characters. In relation to your sample characters above:

1) Font Symbol (Left Side):
Unicode Name = Symbol 68, Unicode Value = ChrW(61508), Wingdings Equivalent Character = Thumbs down sign
Equivalent in Normal Text:
Unicode Name = Greek Capital Letter Delta, Unicode Value = ChrW(916)
2) Font Symbol (Right Side):
Unicode Name = Symbol 121, Unicode Value = ChrW(61561), Wingdings Equivalent Character = APL functional symbol quad up carret
Equivalent in Normal Text:
Unicode Name = Greek Small Letter Psi, Unicode Value = ChrW(968)
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