Problems with Adobe Pi Std

[tlmurray23]

Adobe Pi Std (AdobePiStd.otf), the OpenType replacement for Zapf Dingbats, doesn't seem to be working at all. It's installed by many applications and thus many instances are scattered around my Windows and Mac disks. They are the same version 1.004 and they behave the same:

• In Windows XP and Mac 10.6.4 applications no glyphs appear (Word, FrameMaker, Illustrator, various type tools, you name it)
• Microsoft's OpenType Font Validator indicates some flaws in adhering to standards, but in the end, it says it can't be rasterized
• The tool also says that in one place it's indicated to NOT be a symbolic font, and in another, it is.
• Both platforms have had their caches cleaned and AdobeFnt??.lst files removed.

Anyone else see this? The fact that it doesn't work in either platform, and that the validator can't rasterize it, indicates it's a defective font ... but then again, it would have been caught long before today.

[Dov Isaacs · Accepted solution]

It is not a replacement font for the Type 1 Zapf Dingbats font.

It has Unicode-based encoding of its glyphs. Unlike the older Type 1 Zapf Dingbats font, the characters are not mapped to standard ASCII characters that can be readily keyed. You need to access them out of a character pallette such as those provided in the Adobe CS programs or the Insert Symbol feature of Microsoft Office applications.

The encoding of Adobe Pi Std is similar to that of Zapf Dingbats Std, also Unicode-encoded.

          - Dov

[tlmurray23]

What got me here is that I had swapped out Type 1 Universal News and Zapf Dingbats with UniversalStd NewswithCommPi and AdobePiStd in OpenType -- I read somewhere the AdobePiStd was the Zapf replacement, but now I found ZapfDingbatsStd.  Nothing has changed.

OpenType Universal and ZapfDingbats both behave similarly:

• In Mac Word for example, they appear in some font lists, but if I type a character, Word changes instantly to a roman face.
• They do not show up at all in the Insert > Symbol lists.
• In Illustrator they can be selected, but the dialogs "snap" back to some other roman face.

For a face like Zapf Dingbats, if I have a document using Type 1 Zapf Dingbats, which has (for example) a shadowed box at keyboard letter o, if I swap it out with ZapfDingbatsStd, will I not see that box when I open the document next?

Fortunately I have the Type 1's handy. I'm just not getting this.  I'll play with these OTFs later.

[tlmurray23]

Do you think, then, that the maker.ini entry is incorrect? Even if the Type 1 glyph positions don't map to the same spots in the OpenType Unicode maps, I would think Adobe would have at least mapped T1 Zapf Dingbats to ZaphDingbatsStd.

[Dov Isaacs]

I can't speak for what FrameMaker does, but OpenType Zapf Dingbats Std is not a direct replacement for the Type 1 Zapf Dingbats font. Type 1 fonts don't support Unicode. OpenType fonts do support OpenType and in fact are required to map glyphs per Unicode code maps. Thus, if you migrate from any symbolic Type 1 font to a comparably named OpenType font, you will have some manual adjustments to make. Unfortunately, FrameMaker doesn't have any built-in "magic sauce" converter for handling the remapping (and as far as I know, neither do other programs).

          - Dov

[tlmurray23]

This would be an interesting project -- developing a find/replace solution for processing MIF.

[craigede]

An Extendscript for performing the substitution in Framemaker would be an even better solution than find/replace in MIF

[webmaster22]

I am using Acrobat Pro and I am TRYING to do a form that has some check marks but it seems that Adobe Pi is missing

 

This is a screenshot that shows the problem...

Acrobat has placed a ▯ where there should be a ✔ !!  And despite the fact that Adobe Pi is apparently either missing, corrupted or otherwise unavailable, Acrobat will not allow me to change the symbol font so that it will display properly!!

I am working on a Mac Book Pro that is running the new Mac OS X 10.9 (the new Mac OS X Mavericks)

[Mary-Kate5EFD]

Webmaster22 did you ever figure the checkmark issue out? We are having the same issue at work, but only on 4 of our computers. We found a work around, were we have them open the file in Google Chrome, but as this is a file the have to use everyday that isn't going to be feasible in the long run.

[tlmurray23]

I was trying to remember where I got the notion that Adobe Pi Std was a replacement for Zapf Dingbats. Turns out there is an entry in FrameMaker's maker.ini file that reads "Zapfdingbats, *,*= Adobe Pi Std,*,*"