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Need a way to locate "Unsupported character use"


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I've got a document with a bunch of Greek and mathematical symbols in it, so it was not entirely surprising that the Font Manager reports "Unsupported character use" for my body text font.  Unfortunately, there's no way to find (and thus fix) those uses.  "Locate" in the Font manager is not very helpful when 99.5% of the document is set in the affected font.  I can't use Text > Find because Font Manager doesn't tell me which characters are involved.

So Publisher really needs a way to locate occurrences of "Unsupported character use".

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5 hours ago, sfriedberg said:

I've got a document with a bunch of Greek and mathematical symbols in it, so it was not entirely surprising that the Font Manager reports "Unsupported character use" for my body text font.  Unfortunately, there's no way to find (and thus fix) those uses.  "Locate" in the Font manager is not very helpful when 99.5% of the document is set in the affected font.  I can't use Text > Find because Font Manager doesn't tell me which characters are involved.

So Publisher really needs a way to locate occurrences of "Unsupported character use".

I don't know if this helps support the underlying problem, but here are two suggestions just in case.

There are code charts at the following place.

https://www.unicode.org/charts/

The website is as follows.

http://www.unicode.org/main.html

I addition, the following forum thread may be helpful.

https://community.serif.com/discussion/116117/a-quick-way-to-find-the-code-for-a-character-shape-catcher

If you can send a print screen image showing the characters that you need please, maybe some of us will be able to try to find the answer for you.

William

 

 

 

Until December 2022, using a Lenovo laptop running Windows 10 in England. From January 2023, using an HP laptop running Windows 11 in England.

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10 minutes ago, William Overington said:

If you can send a print screen image showing the characters that you need please, maybe some of us will be able to try to find the answer for you.

I think you may have misread the original post, William. This topic isn’t about finding character codes to use in a document, it’s about identifying exactly which particular characters are being flagged by Affinity Publisher as unsupported characters.

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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40 minutes ago, Alfred said:

I think you may have misread the original post, William. This topic isn’t about finding character codes to use in a document, it’s about identifying exactly which particular characters are being flagged by Affinity Publisher as unsupported characters.

Actually, I consider that I di not misread the original post, though maybe I did.

I wondered if @sfriedberg woud like some help solving the underlying problem of finding out which characters would be needed. So I went from there.

So, yes, you are correct that my post does not respond to the following statement.

> So Publisher really needs a way to locate occurrences of "Unsupported character use".

Yet does one just think, 'Fine, that is your opinion, I don't work for Serif, so I note what is stated, but I can do nothing about it.' and do nothing or does one think 'Fine, that is your opinion, I don't work for Serif, so I note what is stated, but I can do nothing about it. However, I can use my skills as an adviser to try to understand the underlying problem and try as best I can to help if I happen in the particular situation to be able to respond in some way in the hope that what I can say might be helpful'.

I tend to go to for the second option. Some people (and I specifically do not mean you Alfred) take the former view.

Certainly, sometimes my effort to help is unwelcome and I can get a sort of telling off, as happened in a thread in the other place yesterday in the thread referenced earlier in this thread, though not from the person whom I tried to help, but alas that is sometimes the price of trying to be helpful.

William

 

 

 

 

 

Until December 2022, using a Lenovo laptop running Windows 10 in England. From January 2023, using an HP laptop running Windows 11 in England.

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@William Overington, my problem is not that I cannot find the proper glyphs.   I chose some glyphs (actually, Unicode code points), then inadvertently applied a style to them which specifies a font in which those glyphs (again, actually Unicode code points) are unsupported.  I now face the problem of locating all those characters so I can reapply the correct style to them.

Does that clarify the situation for you?

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15 hours ago, sfriedberg said:

So Publisher really needs a way to locate occurrences of "Unsupported character use".

And the ability to turn-off these stealth replacements.
It is only a matter of time before we see a post where some unfortunate person sends a 400+ page book to the printer, and after it is printed, at the cost of thousands of dollars, they are asked by readers about those weird characters on pages 177, 247, and 323.
Gonna happen with this nonsense.

What font are you using for the body text?
Perhaps we can make a test font which will make the stealth replacements stand out.
Temporarily apply the test font to the body style, and all the fake characters will appear.

 

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9 minutes ago, sfriedberg said:

@William Overington, my problem is not that I cannot find the proper glyphs.   I chose some glyphs (actually, Unicode code points), then inadvertently applied a style to them which specifies a font in which those glyphs (again, actually Unicode code points) are unsupported.  I now face the problem of locating all those characters so I can reapply the correct style to them.

Does that clarify the situation for you?

> I chose some glyphs (actually, Unicode code points),

Yes. How did you choose them please? For example using the glyph browser or what?

I am wondering how you got them in the first place/.

> then inadvertently applied a style to them which specifies a font in which those glyphs (again, actually Unicode code points) are unsupported.

Yes. Did you just get lots of black rectangles (that is the default glyph, .notdef, for the font, which the font sends if the font does not have a glyph for the character code that you specify?

> I now face the problem of locating all those characters so I can reapply the correct style to them.

I do not understand that part.

When you chose some glyphs at the start, were they displayed? If so, Do you know in which font they were displayed?

I am thinking that if you apply a different font to all those black rectangles that the underlying code points might still be there and, given a different font, might then diplay correctly.

Or have I misundersttod?

> Does that clarify the situation for you?

Well, a bit but not entirely. I do not know whether you are a beginner with font technology and missing something basic or whether you are very experienced with font technology and this is a problem which I do not understand. Can you clarify please?

William

 

Until December 2022, using a Lenovo laptop running Windows 10 in England. From January 2023, using an HP laptop running Windows 11 in England.

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3 minutes ago, LibreTraining said:

And the ability to turn-off these stealth replacements.
It is only a matter of time before we see a post where some unfortunate person sends a 400+ page book to the printer, and after it is printed, at the cost of thousands of dollars, they are asked by readers about those weird characters on pages 177, 247, and 323.
Gonna happen with this nonsense.

What font are you using for the body text?
Perhaps we can make a test font which will make the stealth replacements stand out.
Temporarily apply the test font to the body style, and all the fake characters will appear.

 

When I make fonts I tend to make the .notdef character a very black, solid, custom shape that I designed years ago. It is bold and obvious. Unfortuantely the tiny thin black rectangle conventionally used in many fonts (often known as a 'tofu box') is very easily missed when glancing through pages of text. My solid .notdef glyph really stands out!

For example,

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/QUESTTXT.TTF

William

 

Until December 2022, using a Lenovo laptop running Windows 10 in England. From January 2023, using an HP laptop running Windows 11 in England.

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5 minutes ago, William Overington said:

When I make fonts I tend to make the .notdef character a very black, solid, custom shape that I designed years ago. It is bold and obvious. Unfortuantely the tiny thin black rectangle conventionally used in many fonts (often known as a 'tofu box') is very easily missed when glancing through pages of text. My solid .notdef glyph really stands out!

For example,

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/QUESTTXT.TTF

William

 

I think you are still missing the point.
The missing characters should be shown as missing, they are not.
The missing characters are silently replaced with another font.

 

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20 minutes ago, William Overington said:

> then inadvertently applied a style to them which specifies a font in which those glyphs (again, actually Unicode code points) are unsupported.

Yes. Did you just get lots of black rectangles (that is the default glyph, .notdef, for the font, which the font sends if the font does not have a glyph for the character code that you specify?

No.  They are apparently replaced by other glyphs, which makes them extremely hard to find by visual inspection.  For example, I found a Greek tau had been replaced by a capital T in some sans serif font.

20 minutes ago, William Overington said:

> I now face the problem of locating all those characters so I can reapply the correct style to them.

I do not understand that part.

When you chose some glyphs at the start, were they displayed? If so, Do you know in which font they were displayed?

I am thinking that if you apply a different font to all those black rectangles that the underlying code points might still be there and, given a different font, might then diplay correctly.

1) No black rectangles

2) Well, OF COURSE the underlying code points are still there.  And OF COURSE I want to reapply the correct font to give the the proper Greek and/or mathematical glyphs.

3) The problem is LOCATING the code points to which an inappropriate style was inadvertently applied.

20 minutes ago, William Overington said:

> Does that clarify the situation for you?

Well, a bit but not entirely. I do not know whether you are a beginner with font technology and missing something basic or whether you are very experienced with font technology and this is a problem which I do not understand. Can you clarify please?

I think this is a problem you would have no difficulty understanding if you stopped overthinking it.

Look, make a test document for yourself.  Using the glyph browser (or cut and paste from some other application, if you prefer) find a code point which is supported by one of the fonts on your system, and not by some other font.  Type in that glyph.  Apply the "other font".

Now, imagine you have a multi-page document with many, many, many special symbols and style changes.  Somewhere in that document, two or perhaps three individual code points have the wrong style applied.  Find them.

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2 hours ago, William Overington said:

So the question that occurs to me, is what font was the glyph browser using when you used the glyph browser to choose the glyphs please?

William

 

Cambria and/or Cambria Math.

And please don't tell me to just change the affected characters back to Cambria font.  That is the whole point.  I intend to do exactly that.  I can't find them.  If I can't find them, I can't fix them.

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1 minute ago, sfriedberg said:

Apply the "other font".

Oh, so you changed fonts. Now I get it.

Also one of my PDF editors is really good at font replacements, so it may be good for simply finding the characters.
A bad work-around at best.

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6 minutes ago, LibreTraining said:

Hmmm ...  if you are using the glyph browser you should have the font selected?
So it should only show the glyphs which are available in that font. No?

The problem is not that I don't know what the appropriate font is.  The problem is that I cannot identify which specific characters in a complex document were inadvertently assigned the wrong styling.

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1 minute ago, sfriedberg said:

The problem is not that I don't know what the appropriate font is.  The problem is that I cannot identify which specific characters in a complex document were inadvertently assigned the wrong styling.

OK. I understand now. Changed fonts.
Now need to find the missing characters in the new font.

Going try the test font route. Would help to have the test doc.

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1 minute ago, LibreTraining said:

Would help to have the test doc.

I don't have a copy of the affected document with me at the moment.  When I get back to the work location, I can attach it here, but I'll leave off the all the linked images.  On the other hand, if I have already found all the affected characters (did not re-check Font Manager after finding and fixing that Greek tau I mentioned above), there would be no point.  We'll see,

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@sfriedberg

I replaced every character/glyph in the font with a black box.
So any characters from any other fonts should show up as actual characters, not as a black box.
Temporarily change your body text style to MacklinTextBlocks-Regular.

Will send you a link to the font via PM.
Let me know how it works.
I replaced everything including diacritics, so there may be some formatting oddities.
But anything not a black box should be from a different font.

 

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[^a-zA-Z0-9 .,] 

Oh, add a bunch of punctuation and line breaks etc.

Put that in the find and replace, you should be able to find the Tau and other oddball characters.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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1 minute ago, sfriedberg said:

This document has a lot of Greek and mathematical glyphs.  Almost all of them are correctly displayed.

By correctly displayed you mean the not inadvertently changed font/Character Style/whatever it was that got you into this situation. So try including the 'wrong' font in the search criteria.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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