New Tech Note: missing or substituted characters in equations

The issue of fonts is one of the more complicated aspects of dealing with math typography because standard system fonts only include the most basic mathematical symbols. Without fonts that include the characters you would like to use in your documents, an application or printer cannot draw the character properly, resulting in missing or substituted characters.

To address this issue, Design Science freely makes available its MathType fonts, a set of fonts covering hundreds of mathematical characters that are often ignored by system fonts. If you have MathType or MathFlow installed, you probably already have these fonts installed.

While the MathType fonts include a large number of commonly used mathematical symbols, if you are authoring equations using less common characters, you may need to install and use outside fonts with Design Science software. Whether you are using a custom font or a public font, Design Science products can use the font of your choice. In most cases, if the font is installed to your system fonts folder, the font will automatically be available for use, but in rare cases some configuration is necessary. If you notice that MathType is not recognizing the font you need, please see the MathType SDK section "Extending MathType's Font and Character Information." If MathFlow is not using the font of your choice, see TechNote 8: Missing Characters.

Are you sharing Word + MathType documents with a colleague who may not have a mathematical font installed? See TechNote 50: Sharing Documents Containing MathType Equations.

Are you printing MathType equations on a printer that uses its own local fonts instead of system fonts? See TechNote 77. Equations Are Printed with Characters Omitted, Clipped, or Substituted.

If you still have questions about fonts in Design Science products, our Support Engineers are always happy to help.

Comments

[Matt Razor]

I'm having an issue with opening the link to TechNote 50. Is there a direct link I could try?

Thank you,
Matt Razor

[Autumn Cuellar]

Sure: http://www.dessci.com/en/support/mathtype/tsn/TSN50.htm or http://bit.ly/8peZA0.

You can also navigate there by going to dessci.com, click on Support, then MathType Support, then Technical Notices.