Problem with showing tonal marks on characters

[Graham_...@adobeforums.com]

Dear All,

This is a repeat question, since I seem to have had some login problem - if anyone can help - please let me know.

I am using chinese romanised pinyin using the Garamond font and my garamond font reproduces the tonal marks in Microsoft Word, Excell etc, but when I try to produce one of the tones in INDD, the letter comes out a pink box with a cross in it. The tonal marks look like this and Garamond is fine with it, just not in INDD.

wči gōng zǐ lič chuán

The problem is the 'V' looking tonal mark above the 'i'. I really can't understand why this doesn't work in INDD. It is very annoying. Is one of my settings incorrect? Any idea how to get this working?

Hope someone can help - Best regards - Graham

[Dave_S...@adobeforums.com]

Graham,

You might want to pop over to the Typography forum with this question. There's been some discussion of these kinds of issues there. Just be sure to say which version of Garamond you're talking about: ITC Garamond, Adobe Garamond Pro, Garamond Premier Pro?

Dave

[Graham_...@adobeforums.com]

Will do - didn't realise there was a typography forum. I'm using Garamond Premier Pro.

Thanks for the tip - Graham

[David_W....@adobeforums.com]

The problem is that very few fonts include tone-marked vowels for pinyin tones encoded in Unicode. Some tones are borrowed from standard accents (grave, acute) but others have their own place in Unicode (01CDh through 01DCh). The easiest thing may be to can keep trying the fonts you have on hand till you find one that has them, but after Times NR and Arial they're likely to be few and far between.

Good luck,
David

[Graham_...@adobeforums.com]

Dear David,

But, I still don't understand. If I can use the type with the tones in Word and Excell, why can't I do so in InDesign?

And you are right, Times NR was about the only font, which showed all four tones in INDD. That's what I am using, but because I am moving between scripts in the same sentence, the overall typeset looks very odd. Garamond is such a beautiful font, it would be such a waste not to use it.

Thanks - Graham

[Graham_...@adobeforums.com]

Hi David,

I went back to my chinese programmes and found their specific pinyin font. Like Garamond, it works everywhere BUT InDesign and it is always the 'V'-looking mark over the vowels which causes the problem.

What is wrong with InDesign that it cannot replicate the tones over characters when the font is specifically designed for this? Are my settings wrong or what? At the moment, only Times New Roman can function in INDD with all four tonal marks.

Such a pain!

[David_W....@adobeforums.com]

I've been able to use pinyin tone fonts with odd-ball encoding in InDesign, so, as I wrote in the Typography forum, I don't think the fault is with InDesign. I avoid using odd-ball fonts because nowadays people generally prefer to have full Unicode compatibility in case their work ends up in electronic form, where non-standard character sets will cripple searchability. Moreover, the odd-ball fonts are often less-than-careful "reproductions" of nice fonts.

Very few fonts from name-brand foundries include tone-marked vowels, or at least the Chinese third-tone (often represented by a hacek, your "V"). You can still use InDesign to make those characters, by kerning the hacek over the vowel (for "i" you need to use the dotless form). The four tones for umlaut-u are more complicated to build by hand, but thankfully less common.

Chinese on computers isn't easy, and blaming InDesign won't get you anywhere.

David

[Graham_...@adobeforums.com]

Hi David,

I didn't think that this was a chinese issue. In my simplistic world if the font/tonal marks work everywhere, but InDesign, then something must be wrong with InDesign (ie I presume that my InDesign settings are somehow incorrect, since it would not occur to me that InDesign cannot do such things).

Anway, you seem to give the impression that I can actually solve this particular problem with kerning. How can I do this. If this is explained somewhere else, it would be most appreciated if you could direct me to what I am looking for. Is it a simple process?

Many thanks - Graham

[David_W....@adobeforums.com]

Graham,

Perhaps I should have beugn by saying that _pinyin_ romanization, like every other romanization scheme, is less than perfect. A particular problem with _pinyin_ is that for tones it relies on tone-marked vowels that exist in almost no other "latin" character set. There are other schemes for romanizing Mandarin Chinese that were specifically designed to for typing (back in the days of typewriters) with the basic 26 letters of the alphabet, but these days they are not so common as _pinyin_.

MSWord disguises this problem somewhat because in its default settings it will automatically switch fonts to avoid showing non-existent characters, giving you a Times NR third-tone-i in text that is otherwise Garamond. MS Excel and MS Publisher may do likewise for all I know. As you have discovered, InDesign behaves differently, and by default flags the missing characters with pink boxes.

The simplest workaround is by kerning: to get third-tone-a you insert the bare "a" followed by the bare hacek accent; then you put the cursor between the two and decrease spacing (keyboard shortcut Alt-left arrow) to move the accent over the "a". Often you need to adjust spacing immediately afterwords as well. As I mentioned somewhere, to do this for "i" you need to use the dotless version, and for um-laut-u you have to raise the vertical position of the tone-mark. This is labor-intensive, so if you have more than a few of these to do you may want to use character styles to help somewhat. (Say, define one style for third-tone-a that applies the desired spacing for the bare a.)

But in fact this is so much work you may prefer to use fonts that come with _pinyin_ tones. Arial is another, and in language textbooks, for example, it can be appropriate for highlighting _pinyin_ phrases. Beware of older, pre-Unicode fonts for _pinyin_ tones available on the WWW, as these tend to use non-standard characcter sets.

Or you can get a font editor and add the diacritics to the font yourself, though in many cases this would be a violation of the license. It's also quite tricky -- font-editing is a complex world unto itself.

Good luck,
David

[Graham_...@adobeforums.com]

Many thanks for taking the time to explain this. There is obviously no perfect solution and no easy fix. Everything with typesetting chinese, pinyin and english together in one document has been a total nightmare. At least now I know the limitations on this one.

Best regards - Graham