ASCII 158 shows OK in Font Creator, but not in Excel

[kembreg]

Hi.
Without doing any modifications at all to the font...

ASCII has a character which is a "z" with an upside circumflex on top.
(number 158)

I have a font called "Times of Slavisk" with Czech fonts.
(www.sweb.cz/ls78/ttfonts.htm )

When I load this font into Font Creator, I can see this "z" with the upside circumflex on top.

However, when I goto into Excel and pick the font I cannot see this character.

It shows up ok in Arial, but not in Times of Slavisk

So basically...
Can see it in Font Creator, but not in Excel
Any ideas why?

Thanks,

David

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

I suspect that you might be able to see the Ůů in Excel because they are mapped to valid characters. The Žž are mapped to control characters, which is perhaps why they are not displaying in Excel. Try deleting the incorrect mappings for all characters, and leave only the correct Unicode Mappings. In the overview window, right click, and for caption select "Microsoft Mappings." Then you can quickly see which characters are mapped to more than one position. This has probably been done for backward compatibility with earlier versions of Windows.

[Erwin Denissen]

Although there are exceptions, usually Windows applications like Word and Excel have no access to glyphs that are mapped to these non-printable character codes:
$0000 - $001F
$007F - $009F

There are even more mappings that can't be used. For example don't use Unicode ranges $D800 - $DBFF (High Surrogate Area) and $DC00 - $DFFF (Low Surrogate Area) as these areas are reserved for use with UTF-16.

[Heian-794]

FWIW, I don't think the classic Mac font configuration contains z-with-hacek either. Does your version of Excel support Unicode?

[kembreg]

Thanks for your replies.
OK, it is MicroSoft mapping $009E
Now what?
This should be ASCII character 158. (It shows up in Arial no problem, but I need this Slavisk font for all the other Czech accents. Only the z is causing problems)

Please let me know what I need to do modify the font to get the z with the accent to show correctly.

I appreciate any feedback you might offer.

David

[Erwin Denissen]

You could map it to:
$017E - LATIN SMALL LETTER Z WITH CARON

[kembreg]

Thanks Erwin.
Okay, exactly where do I click to remap?

David

[Erwin Denissen]

In the Glyph Overview window right-click the glyph with caption Zcaron and select Properties.

On the Mappings page select Macintosh Roman platform. As this platform has no mappings for Zcaron, remove all mappings by pressing the Delete button until all mappings are deleted.

On the Mappings page select Microsoft Unicode BMP only platform. Remove all mappings by pressing the Delete button until all mappings are deleted. In order to add the correct Microsoft mapping click the Select button. Select Unicode Block Latin Extended-A and then select the Character LATIN SMALL LETTER Z WITH CARON (hexadecimal code $017E, decimal code 382). Press the OK button to close the Add Character to Glyph Index Mapping window and finally press the OK button on the Properties window to return to the Glyph Overview window.

Let us know your results.

[kembreg]

Hello.
I did what you suggested.
While it did work in Excel, it does not work in non-unicode environments.

I have Access 97 and I can only use single byte characters.
The z is not showing up in this environment.
Also, VB 6 will not accept Unicode.
How can I use Font Creator to make the z with the caron as character 158 in ASCII and have it work in non-unicode environments?

Thanks.

David

[Erwin Denissen]

As far as I know you can't unless you abuse another mapping. You might want to ask for support here:
http://groups.google.com/groups?group=m ... blic.excel

About ASCII:

• ASCII contains 128 characters. See http://www.asciitable.com/
  There are only 95 printing characters and they should all be visible (except for the space character) unless the font has invalid mappings.
  The printing characters, starting with a space:
  !"#$%&`()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~

[kembreg]

Hi.
Ya, the original ASCII had only 127 characters.
But after that it got extended to 256.

In Font Creator, can you tell me how to move the "z caron" to some other character. For example, I don't need the "@".

How do I make that "@" appear as a "z caron" in my font, using Font Creator.

This is done all the time with Czech and Turkish fonts.

The just replace little used characters with the Czech or Turkish accent.

I look forward to hearing from you.

David

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Yes, you can abuse the mappings in this way if you want. No problem. Just remap the Z caron to whatever you wish. Rather than using @ though, I would recommend you look for another pair of alpha characters that you can do without in your font such as Œ and œ then applications can still switch case, spell-check, etc.

[kembreg]

Hi.
Thanks for your reply.
OK, exactly where do I click
(I'm a newbie).

Thanks,

David

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

We all have to start somewhere. Try reading the manual and the help file, or do what I do when learning a new program, just look at all the menus to see what they do.

[kembreg]

Yes, you're right.
I should read the manual.
Nonetheless, can you give me a few pointers.

i.e. click here, click there. etc. etc.

I would appreciate it. Really.

David