How to change fonts in equations

Report · May 10, 2023

Hi,

FrameMaker 17.0.1.305.

I have a few simple equations which are created with the regular equation editor, not MathML. These equations use a pre-defined font which looks like Times.

My company font is Google Open Sans Light. Very different.

Therefore I would like to change the equation font at least for regular characters, but I do not find a way to do this.

In the online help it says:

To change the font for Greek characters and symbols, choose one of the available fonts from the Math Symbols drop-down list, and click Set.

However, there isn't any Math Symbol drop down list. Or at least I could not find it.

When I tried to change this setting in maker.ini, then FrameMaker always crashed:

[Fonts]

MathFamily=Symbol

I tried Open Sans and a few variations with Regular and Light. FrameMaker always crashed.

The online help also says:

To change the character style for functions, numbers, strings, and variables, first create the character style you want. Then choose the character style from the Functions, Numbers, Strings, or Variables drop-down list, and click Set. FrameMaker displays the style you created in the drop-down lists.

In the Equation Fonts dialog there is "Math Symbols" where I can select only Symbol which is the font from maker.ini. Not helpful.

For Functions, Numbers, etc. I can select a character style. When I set a character style with everything set to As Is, everything is fine. However, when I set Open Sans (or also Arial) in the Character Designer for this character style and click Update, then FrameMaker chrashes immediately without any dmp file.

I also selected the text in an existing equation and applied Open Sans which worked. However, later FrameMaker always crashed, when I wanted to open this file. FrameMaker had also replaced the multiplication dot with a Greek sho character, although Open Sans has this character.

Does anyone know, if I can change the equation font?

I know that the equation editor is rather old. Still it's the default equation editor.

Best regards

Winfried

Report · May 10, 2023

My guess is that the legacy Eq editor was relying on ancient overlay font (e.g. legacy Symbol), where the glyphs were in the 00h-FFh range and had an assigned font. For example, β would not be Unicode U+03B2, but would be 62h (ASCII b) with font Symbol assigned.

To change the typeface would require using a different overlay font, which could be hard to find. Now, that was the old days…

In FM2020, it appears that FM, possibly since FM8, is using some internal math character set for authoring, and rendering output as Unicode PUA codepoints (U+E000…U+F8FF range), embedding a synthetic font for the purpose. β is being output as U+F062. This scheme could be fragile in novel ways.

The MathML initiative was supposed to advanced FM math to the Unicode age but I'm not sure of its present status.

Report · May 10, 2023

Hi Bob,

Thank you very much for your comment.

The symbol characters are set in this file:

c:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe FrameMaker 2022\fminit\mathchar.cfg

However, I would like to at least use my regular font for digits and text.

It does not work to select just the text without symbols and operators and apply my font. I would always select larger parts.

Best regards, Winfried

Report · May 10, 2023

I'll look into this later today, but these example lines from that cfg file:

‹ beta 62 Symbol Regular› ‹ dagger a0 Times Regular› ‹ diver d1b7 Symbol Regular›

suggest that one could use any installed font (not Character Format) name, and that the mapping works for arbitrary Unicode SMP code points.

Report · May 10, 2023

However, in this cfg file there are only a few symbols. Digits and regular characters are more important.

Report · May 10, 2023

Create one or more Character Formats (ƒ) for the eq elements not covered by that fminit .cfg file.
Insert » Equations…
  Equations▼
    Equation Fonts…(!mf)
      Functions: [assign ƒ via pulldown v]
      Numbers: [assign ƒ via pulldown v]
      Strings: [assign ƒ via pulldown v]
      Variables: [assign ƒ via pulldown v]
[Set]

Messing with the Math Symbols: entry might be more safely done by hacking the cfg.

I haven't used the eq palette in years, and wouldn't today, due such objects being collapsed to rasters in some workflows.