font symbol "less than or equal to" not displaying

[cstatham]

Hello
we have a strange problem. I open a quark 4.11 doc in quark 6 and the "less than or equal to" and the "greater than or equal to" symbols will not display. A blank space is left where the symbol should be. It doesn't matter which font was used. However, the copyright and register mark symbols show up fine.

Even stranger, if I print the doc, or make a PDF, the symbol shows up correctly.

If I highlight the blank space, and try to retype the symbol, it stays blank. I am using the key command "Option + <" in whatever typeface the doc uses. (i.e. Univers, helvetica, eurostile")

The same thing happens in Photoshop 7, Illustrator 10, and Text Edit. However, it will work in Adobe Indesign.

I do not have any font management software nor virus protection installed.

I tried it on another OSX 10.2.8 machine in the office and received the same results.

The only success I have is in TextEdit, and only if I change the font to one of the system .dfonts, "Lucida Grande".

I am very puzzled, and this issue has prevented me from moving our shop over to OSX full time.

I know this is a kooky problem, thanks for any help!
~Carol
G4 1 GHz Dual; Mac OS X (10.2.8); 1.5 GB RAM

 

[abhishekit]

you can try repairing permissions. It would be under disk utility in utilities folder.
cheers

 

[jeremy.king]

Have you tried the Symbol font?

 

[cstatham]

Yes, using Symbol worked!

But isn't it strange that using Helvetica or Univers or Eurostile would display fine in OS9~Quark 4.11, but not in OSX~Quark 6?

 

[MisterMe]

Originally posted by cstatham
Yes, using Symbol worked!

But isn't it strange that using Helvetica or Univers or Eurostile would display fine in OS9~Quark 4.11, but not in OSX~Quark 6?

It sounds to me as though you are using a font that, for whatever reason, is not available to MacOS X, but is available to MacOS 9.

 

[cstatham]

..but the font displays correctly in the rest of the document, it is only the "less than or equal to" and the "greater than or equal to" symbol that shows up with a blank space.

Maybe it has something to do with Unicode...?

 

[MisterMe]

Originally posted by cstatham
..but the font displays correctly in the rest of the document, it is only the "less than or equal to" and the "greater than or equal to" symbol that shows up with a blank space.

Maybe it has something to do with Unicode...?

Again, it sounds like a font installation problem. You are not the first to have this kind of problem and MacOS X is not the only OS to reveal it. You must have a very old version of your misbehaving fonts installed on the same computer as newer versions of the same font. The problem will reveal itself in the display and/or printing of punctuation and symbols. If you restrict your documents to the first 128 standard ASCII characters, you will never see the problem. However, any character outside the 128 standard ASCII set, including automatic ligature substitution, may be problematic.