Wrong Characters Displaying When Font Changed

[Deb Sauer]

I have FrameMaker 2019. I'm using custom fonts which are installed on the computer. When I select a custom font in the Paragraph Designer and apply it to a paragraph, the text changes to random characters. So something like the word "Characteristics" becomes "B12YGN/32Rtul4N." I copied the errant text into Notepad and it still says "Characteristics" but that's not what is displaying in FrameMaker. Any ideas?

[Bob_Niland]

What vintage are the custom fonts?

The legacy (pre-Unicode) practice was to re-use the base 8-bit code space (\x00-\xFF in FM notation, normally ASCII and extended Roman) for glyph sets that could be anything. The current practice is to use one of the Unicode Private Use Areas (PUA, such as \uE000–\uF8FF).

For example, if I apply the old MS Webdings font to "Characteristics" (or "B12YGN/32Rtul4N" for that matter), I get a bunch of arbitrary icons.

This doesn't answer your question, but might help someone who can.

[Deb Sauer]

The fonts are Univers Extended and Gill Sans. Both True Type fonts. Both with 1997 dates in the Windows\Fonts folder. I installed them on a different laptop around 2008. I now have FrameMaker 2019 on a new laptop and I copied the fonts over from the old laptop to the new one. I also have Univers Condensed (True Type, 2003) and that works fine (but it's not the font I need). 

[Bob_Niland]

I just tried that text in the current FM2019 (15.0.4.751), using a 1993 vintage Gill Sans TTF, and had no problems. I don't have Univers Extended, but a 1992 Univers was also trouble-free.

[Deb Sauer · Accepted solution]

I closed FrameMaker and re-launched it and then I was having a license/subscription issue (too many machines with FM on it) so I couldn't get back into FM to further troubleshoot the font issue. Today, I was able to correct the license/subscription issue and opne the files. The font issue is no longer occurring. I'm not sure what is going on. Maybe the licensing issue was causing something to go wrong with fonts...? Doesn't seem logical, but I have no explanation. Thanks for taking a look and trying to help out! I appreciate it!

[Bob_Niland]

re: I'm not sure what is going on.
It would be worth running a file system integrity check and malware scan. Chances are it was a temporary memory corruption issue, and won't recur {with the same symptoms}, but take what steps you can to be sure.
re: Maybe the licensing issue was causing something to go wrong with fonts...?
Doubtful. When the license is at issue, FM will either not run at all, or will warn that it's doing a run-once.

In retrospect, I'm actually surprised that we didn't see some font issues with Adobe apps over the last quarter century. Back in the 90s, cheap font CDs were pervasive at tech stores, and these were mostly based on pirated Adobe fonts. The customers would have been unaware. This matter later resolved in court (Docket C-95-20710 RMW). I suspect that Adobe was tempted to have their apps respond "unusually", if, for example, an ornate glyph other than a "¬" was detected at codepoint \xAC.

[Thomas Phinney]

In retrospect, I'm actually surprised that we didn't see some font issues with Adobe apps over the last quarter century. Back in the 90s, cheap font CDs were pervasive at tech stores, and these were mostly based on pirated Adobe fonts. The customers would have been unaware. This matter later resolved in court (Docket C-95-20710 RMW). I suspect that Adobe was tempted to have their apps respond "unusually", if, for example, an ornate glyph other than a "¬" was detected at codepoint \xAC.

By @Bob_Niland

What utter nonsense, on SO many levels.

First, the particular instance Mr Niland is writing about (Adobe v SSI) did involve pirated Adobe fonts, but they had different names than the originals (e.g. “Veracity” instead of “Utopia”) so it is not as if the fonts in this case could be said fonts.

Second, Adobe apps went to great lengths to make fonts work, and with the exception of respecting font embedding bit information to decide whether it was OK to embed fonts in PDFs, I cannot think of (nor even imagine) any case where the Adobe font team ever encouraged anyone at Adobe or elsewhere to make any fonts not work. And even that was a case of respect for the other font companies’ preferences as stated in their font data.

I do know of many cases where the font team worked very hard to understand when and why another company’s fonts didn’t behave as expected in Adobe apps so the apps could fix their bugs, and/or the other font vendors could fix their fonts, though.

I was one of the key people involved in those discussions and disseminating that info, as well as being a go-between betwixt the Adobe fonts team and the product teams.

[Bob_Niland]

Thanks for the historical perspective, not available at the time, or it would have forestalled the "…suspect … tempted…" conjecture.