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Kimberly30993721sps5
Participant
October 10, 2023
Question

Thai vowel and tone marks not showing correctly in InDesign

  • October 10, 2023
  • 3 replies
  • 2740 views

Can someone please help me to figure out which setting I need to set for Thai vowel and tone mark settings to display properly in InDesign? I'm using Noto Sans Thai font (although I've replicated the problem in Cordia UPC). I did some digging that said that changing the Advanced Type Default Composer Preference to Adobe World-Ready Paragraph Composer would fix the issue, but it's not working for me. I'm on a PC, based in the US. Thank you!

 

Example shown below.

 

    3 replies

    Joel Cherney
    Community Expert
    Joel CherneyCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    October 10, 2023

    And now that I've actually drank this cup of coffee sitting my desk, I think I see what I failed to read in your post. You changed the Composer in the Preferences, correct? In Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced Type? That will only affect new text frames drawn in new documents. To affect text that is already on the page, it's possible to use either of the methods I demonstrated, but if you are using Paragraph Styles, it'd be better to make that change there:

     

      K
      Kimberly30993721sps5Author
      Participant
      October 10, 2023

      @Joel Cherney To answer your question, I was modifying an existing document (not creating new) and was using Edit/Preferences/Advanced Type. I tried modifying the language under Edit/Preferences/Dictionary, but that didn't make the change...only changing the language in the Paragraph Styles worked (the Paragraph Styles must be overwriting the document preferences). Your latest video was helpful for me to see that there are 2 ways to modify the Paragraph Style for it to work (Advanced Character Formats/Language or Justification/Composer). Thank you again! 

        K
        Kimberly30993721sps5Author
        Participant
        October 18, 2023

        @Joel Cherney @Peter Spier How would you handle this problem in a multi-language, multi-font document given that the only thing that worked was changing the Language setting and there will be multiple?

        Peter Spier
        Community Expert
        Peter SpierCommunity Expert
        Community Expert
        October 10, 2023

        Joel is the man for this, but just thought I'd check to be sure your text is assinged Thai as the language in your paragraph styles...

          Joel Cherney
          Community Expert
          Joel CherneyCommunity Expert
          Community Expert
          October 10, 2023

          You know, Peter, I was just thinking about that. Some fonts simply won't render correctly if they do not have the appropriate language assigned. It's possible to make features like contextual alternates or mark-to-mark positioning dependent on language settings (as is the case with my entire collection of Telugu fonts, and I did see that you've already replied to a thread about Telugu very recently). However, that's not the case for Cordia, the font I used; my text in my GIF animation is actually marked as English. 

           

          (No, wait, in my example it's actually marked as Arabic! 🙂 But it works just as well when marked as English, or Thai. Poor form on my part, I know.)

            Peter Spier
            Community Expert
            Peter SpierCommunity Expert
            Community Expert
            October 10, 2023

            Well, as I said, you're the expert here. Just didn't want to assume that languasge would not be an issue.

            Joel Cherney
            Community Expert
            Joel CherneyCommunity Expert
            Community Expert
            October 10, 2023

            I did some digging that said that changing the Advanced Type Default Composer Preference to Adobe World-Ready Paragraph Composer would fix the issue, but it's not working for me.

             

            Well, that should be the fix. Here's an animation of me doing exactly that:

             

             

            Note that I have the frame selected when I make that change. If I have nothing selected at all, then the World-Ready Composer would be selected for all new text frames, but it won't change any text frames that are already in place.

             

            Here's another method of doing the same thing - I've selected text with the Text tool instead of choosing the frame with the black pointer Selection tool, and I'm using the Control-Alt-Shift-J keyboard shortcut for the Justification dialog instead of the little hamburger-icon flyout menu on the Paragraph panel, but that doesn't matter, it all works exactly the same:

             

             

            If you still can't get the WRC to render your Thai text correctly, could you describe the steps you're using to turn it on? It's possible that your installation of InDesign is damaged and needs to be repaired.

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