Problems with FrameMaker 7 on MS Windows and non-western languages

Transcription

1 Problems with FrameMaker 7 on MS Windows and non-western languages 1 General This paper is based on the platform Windows 2000/Windows XP, which supports the standard MS virtual font substitution mechanism for Non-Unicode applications. That means, the operating system supports automatically the display of a certain part of a big font, like Arial CE, via enabling a specific country setting. 2 Using languages within FrameMaker Adobe does support FrameMaker for easter- and southern-european languages. Nevertheless it is possible to use for example a greek font, but with restrictions: All dialog boxes remain in Latin-1 font, i.e. it s possible to type in greek indices, to search/replace for greek characters. No dictionary exist for specific languages. The following characters are usable within FrameMaker or are displayed the wrong way (font-depending): Code FM Latin1 Greek CE Cyrill Turk Balt Comment Ѓ Ź Џ ť ќ ђ wrong (130), instead of wrong display Notes: N.b.: Language specific characters in the table above are produced via MS WORD. itl Institut für technische Literatur AG Page 1 of 5

2 The following characters are usable within FrameMaker (language-depending): Language Font Problem Greek greek - Norwegian Latin-1 - Polish CE missing Ź Russian CYR - Slovakian CE Hungarian CE - Czech CE 3 Using languages for creating PDF documents With the normal FrameMaker it is posible to create PDF files but it is possible to create correct PDF-bookmarks for other than western languages. Using the PlugIn UnicodeBookmarks from Shlomo Perets it is (partially) possible to create language specific bookmarks. 3.1 Prerequisites on MS Windows 1. Install specific country settings in MS Windows, e.g. greek. 2. Use the specific font in FM, e.g. Arial greek, Times New Roman Greek, which is a character set corresponding to ANSI Install and activate UnicodeBookmarks 4. Use FrameMaker 6 and Acrobat Create PDF documents 1. Create the postscript file using Acrobat Distiller driver and define the required PDF settings. 2. Create the PDF file with Acrobat Distiller, using UnicodeBookmarks (enable prolog/ epilogue, pay attention to the installation instructions, switch on language specific mapping table) Result: The text is converted correctly, i.e. all characters, which are displayed in FM. Bookmark characters, which are non-western standard, are converted correctly and may lead to corrupted bookmarks. itl Institut für technische Literatur AG Page 2 of 5

3 3.3 Problems coming up in bookmarks With the default settings of FrameMaker 2 problems arise in the PDF file: 1. Wrong font in bookmarks The bookmark texts are converted 1:1 to the target font without transforming it to the language specific subset. In other words: Acrobat uses as standard a Latin-1 font. It may also use a unicode font with subsets of language-specific character sets. This must be indicated via a special code (\376\377) at the beginning of a text. FrameMaker does pay attention to the source language font and converts all character according to its ANSI code instead of transforming it into the language-specific subset. Examples: - French character 231 (ç) is converted correctly to Latin1 231 (ç). - Greek character 225 (α) is converted to Latin1 225 (á), instead of Unicode 945 (α). 2. Wrong coding of characters Two serious bugs occur in FrameMaker: 1. FrameMaker writes some characters the wrong way into the postscript file. This leads to wrong characters or corrupt bookmarks. 2. In some cases 2 different source characters are mapped on the same target character in the postscript file! That means: The entries in the postscript file are wrong, the distiller is able to distinguish that identical characters. Example: Greek character 195 (Γ) and 208 (Π) are both converted to 195 (Γ). itl Institut für technische Literatur AG Page 3 of 5

4 3.4 Convert language specific characters via mapping table (UnicodeBookmarks) Some of the characters can be mapped correctly via the PlugIn UnicodeBookmarks (fontdepending): Code Postscript Latin Greek CE Cyrill Turk Balt 178 І 183 І ł і 184 Έ ł ё 184 Έ ё ø ¹ Ή ą ¹ 185 ¹ Ή ą ¹ ¹ 186 º Ί ş є º ŗ 186 ½ Ί ş є ½ 189 ½ ½ Ѕ ½ ½ 195 Ã Γ Ă Г Ã Ć 195?? Ă? Ğ 208 Ð Π Đ Р Ğ Š 197 Å Ε Ĺ Е Å Å 197???? İ 221 Ý έ Ý Э İ Ż 198 Æ Ζ Ć Ж Æ Ę 198???? ı 253 ý ύ ý э ı ż 216 Ø Ψ Ř Ш Ø Ų 216 Ø Ψ Ř? ÿ 255 ÿ я ÿ ¹ ½ Š Ż Ę Ų ť ќ 254 þ ώ ţ ю ş ž Notes: 1. The wrong conversion of some characters listed above leads to conflict with other, correctly converted, characters. The goal is to give preference to characters of the target language and ignore rarely used characters. 2. FM writes some different characters to the same output character into the Postscript file. E.g. greek characters 179 and 184 both are mapped to Έ. If required, it would be possible to map both to. Depending on the language and the customer it may be possible to get a satisfactory solution. E.g. for turkish, it is possible to select the correct characters. 3. Characters 208, 221 and 253 are in conflict to other important characters. 4. Character 254 is written to postscript. itl Institut für technische Literatur AG Page 4 of 5

5 3.5 The consequences of FrameMaker s behaviour to languages: Language Font Mapping Problem Greek greek missing Π, έ, ύ, ώ Norwegian western - Polish CE missing Ź Russian CYR missing Р, Э, э, ю, я Slovakian CE ý ( Ć) Hungarian CE - Czech CE ý ( Ć) Turkish TUR missing ş 3.6 Changes in Shlomos configuration file Unicode.ini The PlugIn has to be configured, i.e. in the file Unicode.ini a specific mapping table has to be created for mapping each source character to the correct target character. TS_charset 182 <0389> put % capital letter ETA with Tonos For each language a separate mapping table has to be created. Before creating a language specific PDF file the correct mapping table has to be selected. 3.7 Solution The only way to get all language specific characters in bookmarks of PDF files is to change them before their converting to postscript/pdf (problems exist for Greek and Cyrillic fonts). But all ideas will lead to a hack, a reliable solution! itl Institut für technische Literatur AG Page 5 of 5