With some print shops you may get an error back saying something like "This file was created with Mac OS X 10.4.11 Quartz PDFContext / Pages. We cannot print files created with this application."
Mac OS X embeds several subsets of the same font, just like many other applications. However, for some reason some printers (like Lulu) are not able to handle the way Mac OS X does it.
A solution that in some cases works is to create the PDF using Print > PDF > Print to PDF-X. In contrast to a standard PDF, which can be used for many purposes, a PDF-X file is dedicated to facilitate printing.
You can find some more information at the following sites:
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Sunday, March 02, 2008
How do I type Wingdings in Pages?
Wingdings and Webdings are fonts with small images instead of the letters. My personal recommendation is that you do not use them, even if you have the fonts. This is why:
Every document you type will be read by someone - either by someone else or by yourself in a few minutes, days or years. A document you type with Latin letters or any standard unicode letters is likely to be legible by anyone with the right software - today and in the future. But Wingdings is not standard unicode.
Now, let's assume that you want to show the yin-and-yang symbol to a reader.
You know that it is part of the Wingdings font, so you decide to get the symbol there.
So what you can do is to activate the Keyboard Viewer. Then select Wingdings from the menu in the bottom left corner and then select Wingdings as font in Pages and start typing.
However, when you send this Pages document to another computer user, it is very possible that he will not have the Wingdings font, so the character will not display. What is displayed is just "[" because that is the character that Wingdings uses to display the yin-yang symbol.
And the same thing can happen to you. When you change the paragraph style in this document, the symbol will become "[". If you copy the text to another application, it will become "[". If you export it to RTF and then open it in TextEdit, it will become "[". It is basically a very unstable character - just like all other characters in Wingdings, Webdings and Monotype Sorts.
TextEdit does not even allow you to type the character, and that is probably a wise choice. You can insert it from the Character Palette to TextEdit. You find it in the Character Palette with the View PIFonts, Font: Wingdings-Regular. However, what is inserted is the unicode F05B which is in the Private Area. The Private Area means that it can be used by anyone for anything, so depending on the available font, it can appear as completely different characters.
As you do not know which font the reader will have available, you will not know what the document will look like to him. That's why it usually is best to avoid Wingdings fonts altogether.
There are perhaps cases where you need to use them, but try to make sure you have a normal picture as a backup - just in case. You can also use Wingdings to create PDF files, as PDFs usually embed the font.
Every document you type will be read by someone - either by someone else or by yourself in a few minutes, days or years. A document you type with Latin letters or any standard unicode letters is likely to be legible by anyone with the right software - today and in the future. But Wingdings is not standard unicode.
Now, let's assume that you want to show the yin-and-yang symbol to a reader.
You know that it is part of the Wingdings font, so you decide to get the symbol there.
So what you can do is to activate the Keyboard Viewer. Then select Wingdings from the menu in the bottom left corner and then select Wingdings as font in Pages and start typing.
However, when you send this Pages document to another computer user, it is very possible that he will not have the Wingdings font, so the character will not display. What is displayed is just "[" because that is the character that Wingdings uses to display the yin-yang symbol.
And the same thing can happen to you. When you change the paragraph style in this document, the symbol will become "[". If you copy the text to another application, it will become "[". If you export it to RTF and then open it in TextEdit, it will become "[". It is basically a very unstable character - just like all other characters in Wingdings, Webdings and Monotype Sorts.
TextEdit does not even allow you to type the character, and that is probably a wise choice. You can insert it from the Character Palette to TextEdit. You find it in the Character Palette with the View PIFonts, Font: Wingdings-Regular. However, what is inserted is the unicode F05B which is in the Private Area. The Private Area means that it can be used by anyone for anything, so depending on the available font, it can appear as completely different characters.
As you do not know which font the reader will have available, you will not know what the document will look like to him. That's why it usually is best to avoid Wingdings fonts altogether.
There are perhaps cases where you need to use them, but try to make sure you have a normal picture as a backup - just in case. You can also use Wingdings to create PDF files, as PDFs usually embed the font.
Saturday, March 01, 2008
How do I import and export text files in different encodings?
Pages does not pretend to be a text editor. If you want to edit text files, you are much better off using TextEdit or other programs.
When you Export a text file from Pages, it usually uses either Western (Mac OS Roman) or unicode UTF16 as encoding. You cannot choose which encoding you want, and you cannot for sure tell what encoding it was, unless you verify in some other program like TextWrangler.
When you import text files, Pages can usually open UTF16 without any problem and usually also Western (Mac OS Roman). Pages is unable to open the common UTF8 format.
The workaround is to always use TextEdit or another program for text files. You can then copy the content to Pages - if you want to.
When you Export a text file from Pages, it usually uses either Western (Mac OS Roman) or unicode UTF16 as encoding. You cannot choose which encoding you want, and you cannot for sure tell what encoding it was, unless you verify in some other program like TextWrangler.
When you import text files, Pages can usually open UTF16 without any problem and usually also Western (Mac OS Roman). Pages is unable to open the common UTF8 format.
The workaround is to always use TextEdit or another program for text files. You can then copy the content to Pages - if you want to.
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