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Known Participant
April 12, 2006
Question

Font Encoding Glitch in Notes Area

  • April 12, 2006
  • 7 replies
  • 1808 views
Does any have a clue about the problem exhibited in this .jpg image < Breezo Notes Pane>?

If this were HTML I'd suspect document language encoding, but I do not understand how the browser settings might trickle down into .swf files.

This problem is exhibited for a learner in Malaysia and I've not been able to duplicate the problem here.

thanks for any help
    This topic has been closed for replies.

    7 replies

    Known Participant
    February 22, 2007
    Rob, I've sent you my email in a private message. Would be glad to lend whatever support I can.
    April 25, 2007
    Greetings all, I am having the same problem with character flaws in the Notes section but not getting anywhere. Rob, I sent you a private message. Please keep me updated with the status of your forum. I have used Breeze for years and I too have run into so many "undocumented features" that it would be a fantastic for us all to collaborate and learn.


    Thank you,
    Paul
    April 26, 2007
    Everyone,

    For what it's worth, the forum/board on my site is now up. After much working / reworking / updating / upgrading, blah, blah, blah...i simply opted to get the bloody thing going. I had intended to design it with phpBB, but it got pounded with spam in a major way. Because of intense security issues (not to mention hits on my server!), I've opted to go with YaBB as the engine for the Breeze forum I've created. Until I can come up with the cash to host this effort on a dedicated server, for now it will reside under my current site. So...I need to be brutally clear about two things here:

    1. Since this baby technically lives on my site's server, under no circumstances will I tolerate abusive behavior of any kind. Need I even clarify this? It's simple really...treat the boards as if they were your own...because, well, they kinda are anyway.

    2. I've been watching this forum since I started with Breeze 4.0; and although I may not be an expert, I certainly have learned alot along the way. I am committing myself to share what I know and I'm hoping that other folks will be contributing as well. Bottom line: the aim is to give so that others may succeed.

    It's late....enough said, so here's the site:
    http://www.robrode.com/yabb/

    Thanks to everyone for your continued patience!

    Best regards,

    Rob
    Known Participant
    February 8, 2007
    Awesome - I'd love to know more Rob.

    I'll send you my email address in a private message.
    -
    james
    Known Participant
    February 8, 2007
    Hi Rob,

    Are you-thinking of a non-Adobe sponsored forum? I'd subscribe to something like that!

    I've been having the same thought, although I was going to name it 'the truth about Breeze' - since I rarely get anything of value out of this forum. I know that there must be folks out there having the same problems that I have but this forum is so slow (server side) that I don't think many power users have the patience to wait for it.

    Not to mention that there are now Acrobat .pdf questions appearing in the Breeze forums <sigh> this place is becoming more and more useless.

    If you do, choose a better forum software - phpBB rocks! < http://www.phpbb.com/>
    Participant
    February 8, 2007
    Rob,

    I would also be interested in another Breeze forum! I have used flashkit for flash related support for a long time and I was surprised to find that there wasn't something comparable for Breeze. I know Breeze isn't as ubiquitous as Flash, but I was starting to think that I was the only one out there using (and running into trouble with) this application. Please keep me posted about any new Breeze forums.

    Thanks!
    Jennifer
    February 8, 2007
    Hey all!

    I actually have a bulletin board already constructed (yes, it's NON ADOBE SUPPORTED); it definitely needs to be tweaked for sure, and before it's released, i'm in the process now of figuring out how it really needs to be organized so as to make it easier to:

    1. discuss the various problems that we ALL have been experiencing and provide workaround solutions to share with everyone (like we're doing now)
    2. to offer specific add ons, like customizable flash animations. Let's face it; there's only so much you can do with PPT based animations. Even worse, try coding instructionally-sound interactions (drag and drops, graphic explores where you click an area and popups with additional content appear) are next to impossible to create without incorporating some flash elements. I've already created a ton of these kind of assets, and as such i'm wondering if anyone else would find them useful in their own courseware.

    Jim, I share your frustration; seems to me that there has been an increase in posts not related to Breeze at all and all that does is muddy the waters for the rest of us. At least in my ability to monitor my OWN forum, content management can and should be handled in a more direct fashion. Don't know if you guys have realized this, but there are technically more than a few thousand posts related to Breeze; but here an now, you'll only see a small handful available on page 1....which leads me to ask: What the heck happened to all that other content?

    And Jennifer, although I'd agree wholeheartedly that Flashkit is one of a few dozen EXCELLENT resources for Flash, you'll see minimal or NO threads for Breeze, due largely to the fact that Flashkit isn't representative of the Breeze user base like you, me and Jim.

    Bottom line, I want to create an alternative resource--if it works, great. If not, then at least I tried & hopefully we'll all learn something along the way.

    ...getting off my soapbox now...

    Rob
    Known Participant
    February 7, 2007
    Hey Rob, you are one decent fellow. Your explanation makes great sense.
    February 7, 2007
    Hey Guys,

    No problem! This isn't the first time that I've seen what should be simple things go completely buggy. Don't know how it happens, but it does. It's nice to be able to help out whenever/wherever I can.

    I'm actually in the process of developing a forum for various support, design and creative issues around Breeze because it seems to me that there is a huge void here that, if addressed, could help us all out. If you're interested, I'll let you know when those resources become available.

    Rob
    February 7, 2007
    James and Jejequarles,

    I've run into the *exact* same problem over the last couple of years as well, going back to Breeze 4.1 Here's what I've done in the past to overcome this problem, but the bigger topic of conversation is to determine what's causing the errant display problem of the Notes panel in Breeze in the first place. Hold on folks, this is going to be a looooong reply:

    First of all, for a "quick turn-around solution" to the text formatting problem, look at the viewer.xml file directly. Once you open it in notepad, for example, you'll no doubt see the encoded text show up there as well. What I've done in the past is change the way that the "isHTML" variable is set. In most cases, it'll read as:

    <notes isHTML="false">

    Try setting the variable to "true". The easiest way to do this is to do a "find an replace" (Ctl-H in notepad) and enter the appropriate information in the text fields. Hit "Replace All", and notepad will do the rest. From there, SAVE the edited .xml doc and then re-run your Breeze content (F5 for example) in the browser window.

    Here's where the fun really begins....after massaging the variable in the viewer.xml doc, what you'll probably see is a complete change in the way the text is displayed in the Notes panel. In most cases, the font is set to Verdana by default. However, after setting the variable to "true", the text sometimes is diplayed using the dreaded Times New Roman. Major YUCK! There are a couple of workarounds to dealing with that problem, but I'd much rather steer clear of that mosty due to the labor involved in correcting a problem that shouldn't exist in the first place.

    The bigger question is: How the heck did that happen to begin with? Couple of things to watch for:
    1. ANY kind of formatting in the notes section of powerpoint. Eliminate anything that even *remotely* looks like formatting. Period. No bold, no italics, not even changes in font size. NOTHING. I've seen ppt decks go awry because of the smallest amount of formatting only to see text in the Notes panel in Breeze look like it's been through a blender.
    2. There is also a good chance that *something* got corrupted in the ppt deck. Not at all ideal, I know, but in some cases, it means stripping any/all content out of the Notes section in PPT and retyping it back in.

    That said, and I know the problem that #2 above can cause, let me offer another suggestion: If you have a ton of content pulled from a Word doc, for example, you're better off taking the same content and migrating it into a Notepad doc; at least this way, all formatting is stripped. THEN proceed to add your content from Notepad back into the Notes section in ppt (ie: copy/paste); re-publish the deck and take a look at the text within the Breeze shell.

    Other than that, I've had NO LUCK in getting any kind of decent response out of Adobemedia to determine why or where things go wrong with the notes in Breeze. I'm simply offering what I know has worked for me in the past as I still see this issue come up periodically with folks in my group trying to publish content. Short of Adobemedia stating otherwise, that's pretty much how I see it right now.

    Sincerely hope that helps and if you have any comments or questions, please don't hesitate to contact me!

    Best regards,
    Rob
    robva65@netscape.net
    Participant
    February 7, 2007
    Thanks Rob!

    I will try the isHTML fix.

    As to the mystery of why this happened in the first place, our group noticed it after we applied a Flash player 9 patch (in Technote: http://www.adobe.com/go/9df0a79f ). Not sure if that has anything to do with it, but that's when the problem first presented itself.

    Anyway, thanks again for the fix!

    Jennifer
    Known Participant
    February 5, 2007
    Hi Jennifer,

    I'm sad to say that I've not heard any replies about this. I really don't have any understanding of where the Flash player pulls it's font encoding references from. It is a very strange anamoly.

    Participant
    February 6, 2007
    Thanks James. I will let you know if I ever figure it out.
    Participant
    February 1, 2007
    Hi,
    I realize I this is a pretty old post, but I am having the same problem you described and was wonderinging if you ever found a solution. I am using Breeze 5.1.248.

    Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

    Thanks,
    Jennifer