Zapf Dingbats doesn't work

[Jeremy Bohn]

The font Zapf Dingbats (installed by the System) doesn't work in Publisher. It shows up in the menu but when I choose it, there is an exclamation mark in front of it and the font remains as Times. Using Font Book to verify the font results in no errors.

 

[Seneca]

14 minutes ago, Jeremy Bohn said:

The font Zapf Dingbats (installed by the System) doesn't work in Publisher.

It works for me although I also get an exclamation mark in front of the font name.

Mojave 10.14.5 MacBook Pro 2017.

[thomaso]

You can't type in Zapf Dingbats like text with the keyboard. If you use the Glyph panel instead the dingbats occur and the ! disappears. It is a quite old issue with Dingbat Fonts on Macs ...

2007: "Apparently in Leopard (os 10.5) fonts with Special Characters (alternate language glyphs like Arabic, "Dingbats" and other symbols, etc) have those Special Characters stored in the correct Unicode group of the font, and NOT in the regular / Latin area. So previously, where I was used to pressing "b" in Zapf Dingbats and getting a certain compass symbol, that symbol is now located elsewhere in the font, and can only be located using the Character Palette."  
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1273291

... and was discussed in AfPub Beta last summer:

 

[Jeremy Bohn]

I guess it's just InDesign that lets you use it as an actual font then. It doesn't make sense to me. In this screenshot, the entire line is set to Zapf Dingbats. The only difference is the heart was inserted via the Glyph panel.

This font needs to work as an actual font or I'll run up against some walls in text manipulation.

[A_B_C]

Seems that the problem occurs because Unicode C0 Controls and Basic Latin is virtually empty in Zapf Dingbats. Adding placeholder glyphs here will make the exclamation mark go away. Unfortunately, the font license doesn’t seem to permit messing with the font file, so this isn’t an acceptable fix. 

[kenmcd]

17 hours ago, Jeremy Bohn said:

I guess it's just InDesign that lets you use it as an actual font then. It doesn't make sense to me. In this screenshot, the entire line is set to Zapf Dingbats. The only difference is the heart was inserted via the Glyph panel. 

This font needs to work as an actual font or I'll run up against some walls in text manipulation.

Those Latin characters do not exist in the Zapf Dingbats font.
So either ID or your operating system is substituting/adding some characters.
Do an Export to PDF and check the actual font used on those characters.

This could be another case of ID doing something to help users deal with odd situations.

[Jeremy Bohn]

Ya, with InDesign you just change the font to Dingbats and each character on the keyboard corresponds to a different dingbat. I did a bit more looking and realized that at work I use ITC Zapf Dingbats, not the macOS version. So I can ignore the built-in one and have installed the ITC one and it works as it does with InDesign. Unfortunately there's no easy way to remove that system dingbat font.

[kenmcd]

I checked the PDF output from APub Windows and the text font is Times New Roman.
Looks like that is what you have too (or similar Times font).

[Jeremy Bohn]

Well, this is what I get when using ITC Zapf Dingbats on Mac instead of the normal Zapf Dingbats that comes with the system:

So really, Publisher should just not be showing that Zapf Dingbats font as a font choice. I've checked other Mac apps and they don't show the font either. So I think the intent is that it is to be used via the Glyphs panel. The ITC version however, works as a normal font but only the Postscript version.

[Jeremy Bohn]

Okay, so Affinity people, here's what I've encountered with testing three different versions of the Zapf Dingbats font. Some of this might just be "the way it is" but some of this can't be intended:

1. Zapf Dingbats (comes with macOS) - font shows up in the menu with an exclamation point. Picking it keeps your font as Times even though you've picked Dingbats. You can only use the actual dingbats through the Glyphs panel. Other Macs apps that I've tried actually work this way as well, except they don't show the dingbats font in the font menu at all, so I'd say that Affinity needs to do that as well if you can't use it as a regular font (otherwise people like me will think it's just not working).

2. ITC Zapf Dingbats (Type 1 Postscript) - font shows up in the menu and works just like a regular font. Whatever I've typed changes to dingbats when I pick this font. The problem now is that as soon as I use this font is ANY Publisher document, it will not export to PDF, saying there was an error.

3. ITC Zapf Dingbats Std (OTF format) - this is the updated version of the ITC font when Adobe switch to OTF format. It works exactly the same way as the system dingbat font, making my text Times when chosen.

It would be really handy if this font works like a normal font as it does in InDesign. There are many times when I've used a specific dingbat character and it was handy to have it this way. In some special cases it was necessary to Find and Replace dingbat characters, and I don't see a way to do that now except for using the Postscript version, but the export bug needs to be fixed first.

I'm running macOS Mojave.

[kenmcd]

This is definitely another example of Adobe special handling to help users.
They are mapping the Unicode characters in the new font to the old keys.
There is no other reason those characters would appear when you type text.

I realized your Mac Zapf Dingbats is a system font like some of the Windows symbol system fonts - and probably has the same kind of issues.
I ran into this recently using another Windows documentation software.
These old symbol fonts are not Unicode and do not work well cross-platform and on the web. On Windows they use the Wingdings font, the Symbol font, etc. to do some specific things around the operating system. That is why you cannot un-install them.

When exporting documentation to different formats such as HTML (web, CHM, ePub) these symbols don't translate/port properly. They are OS specific and non-Unicode and browsers won't support them. So those specific fonts don't work and should be avoided.
The documentation application created some special handling to fix these problems.

Your Zapf Dingbats system font seems to have some of the same issues.
My guess is it may even be a non-Unicode font like the Windows fonts I mentioned.
Thus it is not a good font to use in a cross-platform publishing application.

The Adobe ITC Zapf Dingbats is a current standards OpenType Unicode font.
APub is handling it exactly as it was designed.

With all that said, I can see how it is helpful to users to be insulated from the problems created by this situation ... helped by the GreatSatan creating this special workaround.
So Affinity folks, please add another wacko font issue workaround to your ToDo list.