Times New Roman font and Slovak keyboard

[Doug Stoner]

I use Word 2004 on my Mac with OS 10.4.5. I have updated Word to
11.2.3 as well. I use Slovak keyboard for my input and whenever in
Word I switch to the Slovak keyboard I can ONLY type in Times New
Roman, 12 point. I even have switched my template (and font in it).
As soon as I switch to the Slovak keyboard, so does the font to Times
New Roman. I could always type in this font and then change the font
afterwards but I would rather type in the font I prefer. Any thoughts
on how to change this or fix this? Thanks - Doug

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

I use Word 2004 on my Mac with OS 10.4.5. I have updated Word to
11.2.3 as well. I use Slovak keyboard for my input and whenever in
Word I switch to the Slovak keyboard I can ONLY type in Times New
Roman, 12 point. I even have switched my template (and font in it).
As soon as I switch to the Slovak keyboard, so does the font to Times
New Roman. I could always type in this font and then change the font
afterwards but I would rather type in the font I prefer. Any thoughts
on how to change this or fix this? Thanks - Doug

There are only a few fonts which have all the letters with diacritics needed
by Slovak. Times New Roman in Office 2004 is one of them. You _could_ choose
to use a Unicode Apple font like Lucinda Grande, but if you do so, it will
be substituted by something else (most likely Times New Roman, the default)
if the document is opened on Windows computers, since they don't have Apple
fonts there. So you're better off sticking with Microsoft Unicode fonts.
People on non-Unicode versions of Mac Word, like Word X and 2001, will not
see the correct characters unless they have a Mac font designed for Slovak
and you use the same one: see below. They will not get correct substitutions
even though they may have Apple Unicode fonts like Lucinda Grande, since
those will not display Unicode characters in Word X or 2001.

There are just a few Unicode Microsoft fonts in Office X: Times New Roman,
Verdana, Trebuchet MS and Arial are the European ones (maybe Tahoma too).
But none of these is complete Unicode: in particular we do not have the
Arial Unicode font as they do in Word Windows. Although most of these have
quite a number of European Unicode characters, Central European, including
Slovak, is a special case: many of the Latin letters with diacritics needed
simply don't exist in all those fonts. I think that it's quite likely that
they may exist ONLY (for Microsoft fonts) in Times New Roman, and that's why
Word is switching to it. If you choose another, non-Apple Unicode, font,
you'll find that some of the characters will actually be substituted from
another font (Lucida Grande or TNR). That may work OK, or may not -
especially if the substitutions are from Lucida Grande or another
non-Microsoft font and you send the doc to a Windows or non-Word 2004 Mac
user.

You may have specialist Slovak or Central European fonts installed. You
ought to be able to type in it, but again it's a bit dangerous to do unless
you're certain that all readers will have the same fonts. Note that some of
the Central European fonts used by OS 9 Macs cannot be used on Windows
computers, and Windows recipients may see wrong substitutions. But you
should still be able to type in them using the Slovak Input (keyboard) menu.
Is this where you're having trouble? What font are you trying to use? Again,
if it's NOT a Slovak or sufficiently Unicode font, you'll see that when you
change the font afterwards, some of the characters will have been
substituted by other fonts (maybe TNR): select just one accented character
at a time and you'll see.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

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PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

 

[Doug Stoner]

Thanks so much for the detailed reply. It helps. I did some other
testing and the only non CE font that I can type in in Word is Times
New Roman. The CE fonts like Times CE, Lucinda Grande CE also work but
they are suspect for PC users like you said. I tried other keyboards
like Hungarian and it is similar. I guess since they are Central
European scripts, they are similar.

The one thing that surprised me was that TNR was the ONLY font that was
non CE that I could type in. The Apple Unicode fonts like Lucinda
Grande did not work. I tried the others you mentioned and they also
switched back to TNR. (If the latest font I tried that worked was a CE
font, then it would switch back to that one instead of TNR.) It sure
would be great to have Arial and a few others that are Central European
so Word would type in it and it would carry over well to the PC.

When I typed in TNR and then switched to a non CE font like Arial, the
diacritic marks did fine too. Maybe other Central European languages
have other characters that don't but so far the Slovak ones work fine.

I don't know what else I can do other than type in TNR if I will send
them to a PC. Hopefully the next edition of Word will have more
options.

Doug

 

[andres.veidenberg]

I've got quite the same problem with my Estonian keyboard layout:
whenever I start typing, or try to change the initial font for
something else than TNR, it changes back to the TNR within a
millisecond. I cannot blame the lack of estonian characters, though,
because I've been using most of the font variety of MS Word for ages
(icluding the first few months of my mac experience). It's just that
all of a sudden, all that I could type with was the TNR. And it concers
only the typing, because I can actually turn the already existing text
to whatever font I want.
I've tried EVERYTHING (messing with the preferences to the complete
hard disk data wipe-out).

So, anyone who could help me out is considered to be my personal life
saviour

Thank you,
Andres