Ubiquitous question mark in triangle shape

[_Ken_Nielsen_]

I have seen this pop up several times in the last week, on the net, on power point presentations. Someone in the audience at the power point presentation yelled "It's a PC problem."

Anyway, here it Is:



Can anyone here identify the cause of this anomaly?

[Dov Isaacs]

There is always some idiot in the audience who will yell stupid things about the issue being a PC problem or a Macintosh problem ...

Without seeing the actual PowerPoint presentation file as well as the fonts involved, a definitive diagnosis cannot be provided. Having said that, instinct would suggest that the problem is associated with cross-platform differences in characters sets used by PowerPoint and/or differences in the fonts between the platforms. This is exactly why using PowerPoint files as opposed to a PDF file (with all fonts embedded) created from the PowerPoint file for an actual presentation is not a particularly good idea.

One of the problems is that PowerPoint on Windows and PowerPoint on Macintosh handle fonts and character sets differently. PowerPoint on Windows has used Unicode encoding for a number of years; I believe that PowerPoint 2008 on the Macintosh is the first Mac version to support Unicode, at least for new documents.

- Dov

[_Ken_Nielsen_]

Thanks Dov,

Good information to know.

Ken

[Thomas Phinney]

Well, using a PowerPoint file and fonts on the same computer the presentation was created on is relatively safe... it's when you move that file without the fonts that you start really asking for trouble.

T

[_Ken_Nielsen_]

"it's when you move that file without the fonts that you start really asking for trouble."

Seems like it might be a good idea to have PowerPoint have a 'Package' option to gather up links and fonts for the purpose of moving the presentation to other platforms.

[Ramón_G_Castañeda]

Interesting that the OP sees a rectangle/square shape as a triangle, though. ;)

[Dov Isaacs]

Actually, it is probably better described as a "diamond" shape. That unusual character is probably the .notdef character defined in that particular font for use to substitute for undefined glyphs.

- Dov

[_Ken_Nielsen_]

Yes, it is a diamond. I stand corrected.

[_Ken_Nielsen_]

"particular font for use to substitute for undefined glyphs."

Good response.