Can We Use Fusion Pro in Russian?

[FusionDave]

Is anyone using Fusion Pro with Russian? I'm not sure how to handle data as it would come in in an excel file (which doesn't export well).

 

Anyone?

[Dan Korn]

FusionPro can handle Unicode data in any language, including Russian.

[vicki]

What about Khmer? I have a project using Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, Hmong, Khmer, Korean, Russian, Tagalong, Vietnamese & Western Armenian. I'm currently working on Khmer and having problems. Characters are correct when viewed in the FP Text Editor but not when I go to Preview and/or print. I've attached 2 screenshots showing the problems. The first character is missing and towards the end of the line there's a backwards looking S with an accent below it. When previewed and printed that accent turns into a +.

 

Vicki S.

O'Neil Printing

[Dan Korn]

What about Khmer? I have a project using Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, Hmong, Khmer, Korean, Russian, Tagalong, Vietnamese & Western Armenian. I'm currently working on Khmer and having problems. Characters are correct when viewed in the FP Text Editor but not when I go to Preview and/or print. I've attached 2 screenshots showing the problems. The first character is missing and towards the end of the line there's a backwards looking S with an accent below it. When previewed and printed that accent turns into a +.

Hi Vicki. Several things:

 

First, in the future, please start a new thread for a new question/subject. This thread is (or was) specifically about Russian. Support for typesetting other languages/scripts are separate issues (and may be a separate, unique issue for each new language; see below).

 

Second, I have to amend my previous comment from four years ago, which is not entirely accurate. It is true that FusionPro can read in any Unicode (UCS-2) data (and now it can also read Excel files natively, which wasn't true in 2013). However, typesetting can be very language/script-dependent. While I maintain that FusionPro can typeset Russian correctly, as well as Chinese and Japanese (at least horizontally), other languages are a different story. Four years ago, I was somewhat ignorant about several aspects of typesetting text in Eastern/Asian scripts/languages. I'm still learning the myriad ways in which all these languages have their own unique typesetting features, as I'm constantly finding out more and more that my own preconceived Western notions about how written languages work are not necessarily true for all of the languages of the world.

 

Third, we have introduced support for more languages and language-specific typesetting features in the last few years. To list just a few:

• Vertical typesetting and alternate vertical glyphs for Japanese.
  
• Position-contextual glyph substitution for Arabic.
  
• Improved support for bi-directional text (right-to-left Hebrew and Arabic mixed with left-to-right English or other text).
  
• Glyph substitution for "complex" Hindi/Devanagari scripts (multiple glyphs to represent a single character).
  
• Positioning for overlapping (combining) marks in Thai.
  

(Note that not all of these features are available in the current production release of FusionPro.)

 

Fourth, and finally getting to Khmer specifically, I think that the fix for Khmer is the same as the one listed above for Thai (which we very recently implemented). Basically, there can be multiple marks (accents) applied to a single base character, in which case the "combining" marks need to be specially positioned so as not to overlap/collide. However, this is true only for certain fonts, as many Open Type fonts have the glyphs for the mark characters pre-positioned to account for this potential overlapping.

 

Therefore, I have several requests for you:

1. Please post the actual Khmer text/data shown in the screenshots. (Attaching a Unicode text or Excel file would be great; the actual collected FusionPro template would be better.)
   
2. Please specify the font used in the screenshots.
   
3. Please try to typeset the text in an Open Type font, such as Arial Unicode MS.
   

 

Once I get the actual Khmer text from you, I can try to see (a) if I can reproduce the problem, (b) if I can find a workaround in a different font, and © if the fix we made for Thai can also be applied to Khmer.

 

I await your response.

Edited October 17, 2017 by Dan Korn

[vicki]

I apologize for the thread issue. Thanks so much for your reply. Because of restrictions on this job I'm limited as to what I can send. Luckily it's a font issue and I'm hoping one paragraph will help.

 

I've attached a file that will include that sample and required documents, the fonts I used as well as just a sample of all the Khmer fonts I found along the way. The font I used, KhmerOSContent, was the only one I found to show correctly in the Text Editor window. I had been through so many and thought I found the one. It was hard to accept it wouldn't preview and print the same.

 

I have two languages left after Khmer, Arabic and Farsi, right to left. I have a solution I can use if necessary but it's definitely a last resort. Can this be done as text, using fonts? If so ..... how? Should I start a new thread with that question?

 

Thank you.

Vicki

Khmer sample.zip

[Dan Korn]

Thanks for the files. It would have been good to start a new thread with your latest response, but now that there are more posts in this thread about Khmer than about Russian, we may as well stay here.

 

I notice now that you're on Mac, which further complicates matters. Many of the enhancements I listed above are Windows-only. So you'll need to compose on Windows to get proper output in Thai, Hindi, and other languages. You can certainly set up jobs on Mac and compose them on Windows via Producer or Server, or some application using Server such as MarcomCentral. (It's possible that we may make the same enhancements to the Mac composition engine, but in our experience, the vast majority of Asian customers are on Window.)

 

I did apply the same changes we had already made, to do glyph substitution for "complex" Hindi/Devanagari scripts, to the Khmer Unicode range as well, and with that change, I think the correct output is generated (or at least output that more closely matches what's shown in the Text Editor). Although, it's still not completely clear to me what the "correct" output should be, as different programs and editors show different rendering for Khmer. Anyway, that Hindi/Khmer glyph substitution enhahcement will be applied to a future build of FusionPro 10, although it will be Windows-only.