Typophile

Missing ASCII circumflex from font changes typeface after typing circumflex-accented glyph

Mathieu Christe

Hello,

I've used a font in Microsoft Word, which works fine except when I need to type circumflex-accented glyphs.
In general, I've noticed that when you type a circumflex, before typing the letter you want to accentuate, you temporarily get the ASCII circumflex. Then, when you type the letter, say "a", the correct circumflex is used in the pre-built accented glyph.
So, in the present case, when I type "^" plus "a", Microsoft Word changes to Times. This behaviour rang a bell, so I opened the font in FLS and the ASCII circumflex is missing from the problematic font file. My assumption is that as Word can't find that glyph (ASCII circumflex), it switches to another default font.

2 questions:

– Is it a Microsoft Word "bug"?

– How can you avoid such a problem if you design a typeface and don't feel like drawing the ASCII circumflex?

Thanks & best,

Mathieu

Mark Simonson

I would say this is a bug in the font. How hard is it to draw an ASCII circumflex?

Mathieu Christe

Thanks for your answer. It's not hard to draw it but if you can avoid to… especially if nobody will ever use it, say in the case of a custom font for a client.
Anyway, if I understand correctly, you presume that a font should work fine without that missing ASCII circumflex glyph.

Mark Simonson

From your description of the symptoms, I would say yes. I would also point out that this is not a character that no one ever uses—you used it yourself when you typed the sequence for acircumflex. Leaving out a standard character that applications expect to be present, you risk having things like this occur. Whatever benefits you think it may provide, it's probably not worth it, as your problem illustrates.

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