Zapf Dingbats font doesn't work in FrameMaker 8

Don't know if anyone still have problems with Zapfdingbats in FM8, but I just found a useful link, that is, it was helpful for me:

http://www.techknowledgecorp.com/help/zapfding.html

Fred

Just a small side issue. The old Dingbats font works okay on my Windows FrameMaker 8 system. However, character 173 (a circled serif number 2 with white background) appears okay on the screen but in print and PDF appears as Dingbat character 45 (the hand holding a pencil). All the other Dingbat characters print okay. Does anyone else's system exhibit this singular mismapping?

This character prints to paper and PDF okay on UNIX FrameMaker 8.

Dave

Well, I had to put back the original Zapf Dingbats to do some work in Frame 7, and just for fun I loaded Frame 8. Now the font works fine. I have no idea what I did, but it was something you suggested, so we are all set now.

Just Wish Cud would update his little utilities...Can't do without his book exporter utility.

Thanks again!

I did all the %font changes, deleted all the bpd files and Frame's font cache and rebooted.

No change.

My default printer is Adobe PDF. I had it set to the Generic PostScript printer driver, then I tried changing it it the Adobe PDF converter. This makes things worse, because now Word won't print Zapf Dingbats (although they are displayed). Frame 7 still substitutes a font--Arial this time). Notepad and Frame 8 prints normally.

Clearly, nothing is acceptable to Frame 7 except the original antique Zapf Dingbats. I am at a complete loss.

A little more research. I uninstalled the ZapfDingbats font altogether. Frame 7 and 8 still think it is installed. Frame 7 is happy; Frame 8 is not displaying the font.

Note that as far as other programs are concerned (Word, WordPad), ZapfDingbats is not installed. Only the Frames do.

I think what we have here is some default printer font that's somewhere in the system. I have searched for close to an hour and can't find it.

I deleted that file and rebooted. No joy. The regenerated font works fine in Frame 8, but Frame 7 is substituting Helvetica. I printed the page to pdf and checked the font with Pitstop--yup, Frame is subbing Helvetica. ZapfDingbats is appearing in Frame's font list, but the program just won't use it.

Word, Notepad, WordPad, and Frame 8 all think the new font is fine.

Still scratching my head.

Distiller could, however, find the font when distilling the same file in Frame 7. Makes no sense to me. I will delete the fntcache.dat file and be right back after reboot. Thanks so much for your help, by the way.

As a follow up, I took my regenerated Zapf Dingbats and changed the name of the font to DingbatsNew and then installed it. Both Frame 8 and Frame 7 are happy campers and display this font just fine.

Clearly, there is an old zapf dingbat somewhere in a cache or font list that is confusing the programs. Can someone figure out where that might be?

I never even knew there was a Dingbat fix, as I never had a problem with the font and Frame before.

In Frame 8 all the characters disappeared. When I print to a pdf, I get an error message thusly:
%%[ ProductName: Distiller ]%%
%%[ Error: ZapfDingbats not found. Font cannot be embedded. ]%%
%%[ Error: invalidfont; OffendingCommand: findfont ]%%

Stack:
/Font
(ZapfDingbats)
false
/2
0
/F0
false
/ZapfDingbats

I get no such error message with Frame 7.

Now, I took my elderly Zapf Dingbats font and ran it through Fontographer--I didn't change a thing, I just generated a new Type 1 font. Frame 8 was happy with that one, but Frame 7 displayed some other font instead. I have no idea what the font is, it kinda looks like Arial.

Scratching head...

I'm also using an Adobe Type 1 ZapfDingbat with Frame 8. No problems.

Way back in the FM 5 time frame, there was a Zapf problem and a patch was released but I don't know if it modified the font or the program; still on the FM downloads page as far as I know. May be worth looking at, especially if you're talking about an 18-year old font file.

Art