Need help searching for a space character from a converted Quark doc

[BsmithMTP]

Hello.  I am hoping someone hear has an answer for this. We have been converting our old Quark docs into Indesign using Markwarz Q to ID plug in.  Some of the Quark docs, someone used a standard non breaking space. When converted, we get a random character inserted where that space would be. It prints, so it's something we would like to remove faster than going page-by-page looking for it.

I have found no way to search for that space. It doesn't copy, and any variation of searching I do, it comes up with nothing. Tried GREP even.  See attachment. Circled in red.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Mike Witherell]

Hi Bsmith,

Have you tried: using the Type tool to select the odd character; then right-click and choose "Load Selected Glyph in Find" ? 

Does doing so reveal the GID/CID or Unicode?

[BsmithMTP]

Yes. It shows nothing as if it doesn't exist.  It's very strange.  As far as Indesign is concerned, it's not there, even though it prints.

[BsmithMTP]

I do get the unicode and GID/CID, but searching for that comes up empty.

[davecourtemanche]

Not sure if it will help, but have you tried searching for the hidden character code: <FFFF>
If it finds it, you can replace with the ID non-breaking space.

[BsmithMTP]

Sadly, that's a no go. There is no hidden character code to be searched for.

[Joel Cherney]

I'm sure that somebody here can figure out some way to search for it. Can you post an INDD that has one for us to search for?

Honestly, I think that Dave Courtemanche is on the right track - but my recollection was that it was <FEFF> in the Text tab of the Find/Change dialog, not <FFFF>. That codepoint winds up getting used for a variety of different things in InDesign, so I don't suggest immediately doing a Change All, on the offhand chance that it works. 

Yes. It shows nothing as if it doesn't exist. 

My bet is that it's "showing" you a zero-width space, which, yeah, would look like nothing. You can prove to yourself that it's there by

• putting your insertion point into that Find menu that is showing you nothing
• whack the End key
• key in any letter
• whack the Home key
• key in any letter
• then whack Home again
• now hold down Shift and start hitting the right arrow button.

Once will select your first letter, then the second will select your zero-width space, and the third will select your last letter. It's in there! But because that codepoint is used for lots of other things in InDesign besides the zero-width space, you can't search for it by GID or Unicode value or typical find/change operation. 

[BsmithMTP]

Thanks for the tip, but the <FEFF> while finding other hidden characters, did not find this one.

[Joel Cherney · Accepted solution]

This one was weird! That means "good" in my book.

A search for <FFFD> will find it. It's � - the "Unicode replacement character." 

[BsmithMTP]

That solved it!  Thank you! Been beating my head for quite a while trying to get to the bottom of it.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

"A search for <FFFD> will find it. It's � - the "Unicode replacement character." 

Yay! Ignore everything I added below!! I had tried searching for FFFD but I wasn't phrasing it right in the search dialog. using the brackets worked.

[BsmithMTP]

Also the home/end trick did not find anything.

[Joel Cherney · Accepted solution]

Nope, I guessed wrong. But the true identity of the dropped glyph was actually in the Info panel:

[BsmithMTP]

I never thought to look there!

[BsmithMTP]

Here is an INDD file for you all to play with. The character in question is the A with a caret over it between the 5 and point.

[BsmithMTP]

It's in Helvetica.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

What version are the Quark files?

Are you using the current markzware Omni/IDMarks, or is this an old Q2ID plugin?

[BsmithMTP]

Quark 9 or older and yes, it was the older Q2ID plugin. The new one I am using (QXPMarkz 2023) doesn't seem to have this issue, but since so many of our docs have already been converted over the years, it's becoming an issue with them getting in the final publications.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

Looking at an IMDL file, it comes up as "CustomGlyph" and is indicated by a Question mark, indicating a #notdef character (i.e. U+FFFD)

This bears out in a PDF of the file as is, compared to a PDF I made with the proper Acircumflex character.

Unfortunately, as you have found, you can't search for an U+FFFD character, so I don't what you can do to automatically find these.

(and, no, searching for CID 194 didn't work either)

 

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

Sadly, there must be something about the old plugin that's doing it. I did a couple of test files using all the non-breaking space options in Quark (there are 4 of them!) saving as a version 4 Quark file since InDesign can open those directly and it converted perfectly. I don't have QXPMarkz/OmniMarkz to test newer Quark files, but If you have a bunch of these, you might consider buying it for your conversion project.

[Scott Falkner]

Can you edit the original QuarxPress files? You could replace the non-breaking spaces there with normal spaced then do the conversion in the modified docs. If you can't, perhaps because you don't have a compatible version of QuarkXpress, perhaps someone here can do it.