Chinese seal script won't print, though other Chinese styles will print just fine

[sealscript]

Windows 8.1, Word 2013/365, printer is HP Photosmart 5514. The printer simply doesn't print the document. It says,  "The printer couldn't print Microsoft Word ____" (document name is where ___ is).

I can print documents in other Chinese character styles (楷書、行書、and 隸書). I can not print seal script (小篆) documents. I can not export this file to PDF (I get an error message), but I can export it to RTF and OpenDocument Text (those also refuse to print).

I understand that apparently a machine that can print all manner of pictures still requires fonts to print text, but I have the font in Word. The attached image has the beginning of the document if that clarifies anything.

Thanks for reading !

[dansdaduk]

The Photosmart 5514 (like most HP inkjet devices) uses a Page Description Language knownn as PCL3GUI.

This is a raster-based language, where encapsulated, compressed, raster images are sent to the device within a simple PCL wrapper; the printer just unencapsulates and uncompresses the images, and prints the resultant dots.

The printer has no concept of fonts; all of the hard work of converting text characters (whether they be alphabetical characters or ideographic characters) is done by the workstation, which converts the text to raster images.

So the fault must lie in how the application (in conjunction with the printer driver) is handling the text in the problematic font.

On your workstation, is it a TrueType (or OpenType) font, or some other format?

If a .ttf (or .otf) font, what does the Microsoft Font Validator tool (see http://www.microsoft.com/typography/FontValidator.mspx ) make of it?

[sealscript]

Thank you for your clarification about how the printer gets its instructions. It is a true type font. I was able to get it to print using the program CutePDF, but ideally I would want to be able to print directly, the same as with other documents.

[sealscript]

It would be wonderful to recieve a reply from someone about this. HP is one of the largest computer companies in the world and there product refuses to do what it is supposed to. Just wondering why. Would also like to know how to fix the problem. Thank  you : )

[sealscript]

Oh, and yes, Font Validator said "pass", but you told me that fonts don't matter. Note the screen shot above. The font is fine on my computer. It just won't print. I can print all sorts of weird stuff, fontwise. Come to think of it, I once printed a different seal script font . . .

[dansdaduk]

>> ... HP is one of the largest computer companies in the world and there product refuses to do what it is supposed to. Just wondering why. Would also like to know how to fix the problem ...

This forum is a peer-to-peer forum; most advisors (including myself) have nothing to do with HP, other than as users of some of their products.

It is not a portal into HP technical support (although some HP staff do look at some of the posts).

>> ... I was able to get it to print using the program CutePDF, but ideally I would want to be able to print directly ...

Which confirms that a different application, in conjunction with the same printer driver and font, appears to work OK.

As I said before "the fault must lie in how the application (in conjunction with the printer driver) is handling the text in the problematic font".

i.e. it appears that the generated print stream from your Word document(s) contains something invalid which the print objects to; or is it that Word itself fails? Your error message doesn't make it clear where this comes from.

To investigate further would require (at the least) a copy of one of your problematic documents (hopefully quite short, and with 'sanitised' data) and a copy of the TrueType font.

If the printer was a PCL5 or PCL6 printer, given those files, I could do some investigation (but without any guarantee of finding the cause of the problem).

But as it is an inkjet device, using PC3GUI, I can't help, sorry.

[dansdaduk]

I don't know anything about Seal Script, so I thought that I'd look it up; this Wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_script indicates that:

"It has been anticipated that the Small Seal script will some day be encoded in Unicode. Codepoints U+34000 to U+368FF (Plane 3, Tertiary Ideographic Plane) have been tentatively allocated."

I don't think that this has been ratified yet - see http://www.unicode.org/roadmaps/tip/

What codepoints are used in your font, and how do your documents reference them?

[sealscript]

This is a font, off of unicode input. It's like putting this text here in Old English font. It will look very different, but it is just a font. That Wikipedia article is not terribly well done.

I'm sure you mean well, but you have focused both on the font issue and told me it's not about the font. Word displays the text perfectly,  as in the picture above. I print other odd Chinese fonts. But this one was more important to something I am working on. Don't bother with this since you are not from HP (this site's label led me to believe you were). I will get another printer.  All the best.

[dansdaduk]

>> ... you have focused both on the font issue and told me it's not about the font ...

I don't think that I've said anything of the sort.

What I did say was:

The printer has no concept of fonts; all of the hard work of converting text characters (whether they be alphabetical characters or ideographic characters) is done by the workstation, which converts the text to raster images.

So the fault must lie in how the application (in conjunction with the printer driver) is handling the text in the problematic font.

Without further evidence, it is difficult to say whether the fault is with the font, or the application, or the printer driver.

Hence if you use a different printer & printer driver, you may experience the same problem.

[SUNMAX]

I just know this problem is exist from 2015 until now 2017<br>I just bought a hp color laser m176n and cant event print this font(问鼎中楷简t)<br>Before this i am using canon lbp550 and this problem did NOT EXIST IN CANON <br>I m truely REGRET PURCHASED PRINTER FROM HP.