Comments on: Why Zapf Dingbats Std Ends Up Pink

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 04:44:52 +0000

Blue, wow that’s pretty ugly. I would try to apply all those font changes using character styles in Word (and make sure the character styles are based on “underlying properties” in word, not default para formatting). That might help the import. Or perhaps try exporting as RTF from word and importing that?

By: Blue

Blue — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 21:33:35 +0000

I have a ‘and not only that…’ question. (CS3 on Windows XP)

I format the Word document and flow it into ID, but when it gets to an unusual character, such as a Greek sigma (we use Euclid Symbol for Greek characters) it’ll give me the dreaded pink box, but then rather than going back to the proper text font, it’ll continue on in Times New Roman, or some other generic face ID has suddenly taken a liking to. The program will also stumble over ‘oblique’ type styles. If we are so bold as to call out ‘Helv. Neue Book Oblique’ - it’ll go to pink for the oblique characters and then, rather than back to Helv. Neue Book, it’ll finish off the paragraph in Times New Roman. I’d cut Adobe some slack here, but these are Adobe typefaces operating in Adobe CS3. What gives?

By: Jay

Jay — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 16:40:42 +0000

So, if you needed to regularly use ITC Zapf Dingbats but the InDesign document you were getting was from a Mac Type 1 or DFONT source, how can you get that to effectively show on Windows? The Mac people don’t want to use the OT version because of the pink box, and the Windows people don’t want to find and replace the Mac document with the new OT version.

By: DrWatson

DrWatson — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 15:02:35 +0000

Hmm, have you ever tried using the OpenType-Dingbats in e.g. TextEdit (MacOS X)? There it works as expected, hitting “n” gets you a solid square! So after all it seems like the OpenType-Dingbats font behaves as expected _except for_ InDesign (in fact, all Adobe Apps).

By: Eugene

Eugene — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 17:33:57 +0000

Perchance an update or something had to do with it.

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 16:01:47 +0000

Federico, that is very strange. In the original question (above), SS says he tried it in Windows and it didn’t work. I just took his word for it, plus Adobe’s own PDF on the subject agreed with him. But now that I try it, you’re right: This does appear to work “as expected” in Windows. Hmmm… more encoding mysteries.

By: federico platon

federico platon — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 11:04:05 +0000

Hi David,
Yes, it happens as described in Mac OSX, but not in Windows XP.
I can select Zapf Dingbats Std font and start typing n, o, p, … and the square boxes appear, I can also select some text and choose ITC Zapf Dingbats Std in the CP or Char. panel and I get it right.
Even using the eyedropper on some text after grabbing properties from a ZapfDingbat character works flawlessly, on a Windows machine, ID 5.01.
Warm Regards and Happy Xmas to everyone here.

By: Eugene Tyson

Eugene Tyson — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 10:46:38 +0000

Sometimes I’m importing text from another application, like Ventura. I have my body type set to Book Antiqua, but the character for a bullet does not show. All I get is a pink highlight of an empty square. The bullet does not appear in the font, for example.

I tried the Find/Change Glyph option as before, and it does nothing, because how can it find a glyph that doesn’t exist?

So what you can do is copy the glyph from the text and paste it into the GREP box, this puts in the unicode declaration for the Glyph, you can then Find/Change the Glyph to anything you want.

Of course the way stated above is the correct way, it’s just sometimes, for me anyway, the Glyph does not exist and it cannot find it. But it will find the copy and paste into the GREP dialog box.

I hope that made sense?

By: Anne-Marie

Anne-Marie — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 00:07:40 +0000

Good answer! Yeah those OT dingbat fonts … oy. I did what most ID users do, I think … use Type 1 for the dingbats.

Another way to find out the Unicode value for any character is to select it and then look in the Info panel, btw. Only works when you have just a single character selected.