Zapf Dingbats font doesn't work in FrameMaker 8

[Guest]

many of my company's standard templates use Zapf Dingbats. In Frame 8, these characters disappear. It it really possible that Adobe fixed Frame 8 so this font can't be used? Is there a workaround? Using a different font isn't a solution because of the way documents are shared and routed.

I am using Windows XP SP2 on a Dell Inspiron 6400.

[Arnis Gubins]

Which font type are you using: Type 1, TTF or OTF? The OTF and
possibly TTF use unicode ranges, while the Type 1 still uses the ANSI
range.

I'm using the Type 1 with FM8 and have no problems.

[Guest]

I am using the original type 1 from Adobe. It's dated 1992!

[Arnis Gubins]

Susan,

That's a pretty old font. Have you ever applied the Dingbats PFM fix?
It's available at:
http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=515

Are all Dingbats characters disappearing? Do they show in output
(print or PDF)? Can you enter new characters using the font?

[Art Campbell]

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

[Guest]

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...

[Guest]

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?

[Arnis Gubins]

Try deleting the fntcache.dat file in your \Windows\System32 folder
and reboot - it will then get re-built.

Also make sure that Distiller knows where the version of Dingbats
resides (Settings > Font Locations in Distiller). The Distiller error
message indicates that the font wasn't where Distiller knows about
them.

[Guest]

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.

[Guest]

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.

[Guest]

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.

[Arnis Gubins]

Susan,

You may want to have a look at this post by Dov Isaacs:

http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.ef4dc6a

This describes how to hack the Adobe PDF or Distiller printer instance
to ensure that Dingbats aren't being inferred as being printer
resident.

[Arnis Gubins]

One other thing, is your default printer the Adobe PDF printer
instance? If not, you might want to get Sundorne's SetPrint utility to
ensure that only the PDF printer instance is available when creating
FM docs.

See http://www.sundorne.com/FrameMaker/Freeware/setPrint.htm

FM also has a small ".cache" file in its \fminit\fonts folder that you could delete - it will get re-built when FM starts up again.

[Guest]

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.

[Arnis Gubins]

Which version of Acrobat (or at least the Distiller version) are you
using? Do you have any other Acrobat/Reader versions installed on your
machine?

Also what joboptions in Distiller are you using? Is the Dingbats font
perhaps set to Never Embed in the Font options there?

Are you consistently printing to the same device (i.e. Adobe PDF) and
distilling with the same joboptions from the different versions of FM
and other applications?

[Guest]

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!

[Tigdave]

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

[_Fred_Schutze_]

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