🚀 go-pugleaf

Hi, Matt,
A bit more more info -- let's start with what version of FM 7.0 (the "pxxx" number from Help > About).

When you print, are you printing to a physical printer, and if so, what type of printer is it (i.e. is it PCL or Postscript or ???).

Have you tried making a PDF of the document first, and then printing?

Sheila

Hi Sheila,

The FM version I use is 7.0p492.
I print 2 ways: 1) PDF (Acrobat Distiller 5.0 2) Brother HL-5250DN 1200DPI.
In both cases, the print (on paper) result is the same: the ring is not centered.
(However, in case 2), the minus signs are now replaced with the angel sign.)
Also, when inspecting the integral in Acrobat on the screen, the ring appears centered up to a zoom level of 800%, above which the problem becomes visible.
The print out gives me the same result as what I see when using the zoom level 1600 (in FM).

A friend who uses FM 8 got a similar result when printing to paper. The screen in FM also shows an off-centered ring.
Interesting is that the ring in my prints is to the left, while in his, it is to the right of the integral.

Matt

Version 7.0p492 is one of the first versions of ver 7, and so it could be [slightly] possible that you're running into a font issue that was resolved in one of the free updates; even if your font issue wasn't part of an update, I'd strongly suggest that you apply each of the updates (they have to be applied individually, in order, as they're not "roll-up" style updates) to get up to 7.0p579.

Here's a link: <http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=22&platform=Windows>

I was hoping that one of the forum's math / equation gurus might pop in here to give some advice, too.

Another more likely possibility could be if you have duplicate Symbol fonts installed on your system -- if you have both a TrueType (TTF) and Postscript or OpenType Font version of the Symbol font, sometimes there's a conflict where one version is used on screen but another version is actually being printed.

Another question: check in your maker.ini (there are two, one in your Documents and Settings for the user-level settings, and one that's located in the Program Files install directory) to see what you have for the [Fonts] section for a setting

DisplayUsingPrinterMetrics=On

That controls how closely the onscreen display matches what actually prints on the printer -- this is often very apparent when the righthand line endings on the screen don't match the printed line endings very well. "On" is what you want.

I have upgraded to 592 and the problem persists.

The font side is a little more complicated.
There are about 600 fonts in my windows\font directory. one True Type Symbol font.
The \fminit\fonts directory has one .cache file and 4 .sbx files.

I also installed FM on my laptop (Vista) and the print out is also offset, but to the other side and not as much as from my main system (XP). The Vista system has one Symbol font, which it says is OpenType , but the extension is still ttf.

The DisplayUsingPrinterMetrics was off and I turned it on. It did not seem to make any difference. (I only have one maker.ini file.)
Nevertheless, this should not be an issue, as I could see the way it would print at higher zoom levels.

It seems to point to a font issue. How do we know that the contour integral sign is from the symbol font?

Here's where I'm getting the Symbol font:

-- click on Special > Equations
-- on the left top, there's an "Equations" dropdown. Click on Equation Fonts
-- the dialog indicates that Math Symbols is set to "Symbol"
-- I created a small equation and inserted

Ah, I see what you could be seeing.

In FM 8 I changed the setting for "Small" in the "Equation Sizes" dialog to 44pt. Depending on the percentage zoom set in FM the ring does move to one side to the other (even though I have Acrobat set as my default printer in FM, so it should be viewing as printed).

So then I made a PDF. In the PDF the ring moves left/right as the zoom level is changed, as well -- only at 100% display does the right appear centered. This is analagous to other display oddities happen in Acrobat, e.g. where lines don't quite join up or overlap each other, depending on the zoom, but it's considered a display artifact because it should print with 100% fidelity even if displayed incorrectly. The amound of distortion is also dependent on the Acrobat version, I believe; I'm using Acrobat 7.1.

Next I'm going to test printing to a true-blue Postscript printer and a non-PS printer, and I'll report the results.

ok, I see the same problem that you're having, the ring is printing off-center to the integral symbol. Output tested in both HP non-PS printer and in Xerox true-blue Adobe Postscript printer.

I suspect the reason is that FM's equation editor is "constructing" the symbol from two separate glyphs, and for some reason it's not getting the sidebearings (offset from left/right) for each glyph correctly, or at least not overlaying them accurately.

This is similar to the issue when some fonts don't have good/sufficient kerning pairs, so letters end up "colliding" or running into each other.

I don't know if this is an option for you -- and I have no idea whether FM's equations can use other fonts -- but other fonts =do= have the "real" contour integral symbol and they do display and print correctly from FM. e.g. following the info on this page (see the link "Fonts that support...") ,
 <http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2233/index.htm>
I tested the symbol using Arial Unicode MS outside an equation and it displayed and printed perfectly on both printers and at all resolutions.

Other possible options:

1. If FM's equation editor can be adjusted to use another font then you might be able to use a different Symbol font that might have either better sidebearing info and so the two glyphs might align properly.

2. there are font editors that can be used to adjust the sidebearing settings in fonts (e.g. for adjusting kerning pairs). Whether doing this might cause problems if either of the two glyphs are used in other combinations would of course be an issue.

3. Can FM equations be changed to use non-Symbol fonts? Haven't the foggiest, sorry. It looks like it might be possible to specify a character tag in some of the equation dialogs, but I'm not an FM math user so ...

I'm hoping that the math whiz folks on the forum might jump in here <looking around>