A bug in Apple's Macintosh OS X may cause display and printing problems using PostScript versions of the MathType symbolic (non-alphabetic) fonts. Other symbolic fonts (e.g. PostScript versions of Symbol) may also be affected. The specific problem is that certain characters are not drawn correctly.

By default, MathType 5 uses TrueType versions of the MathType fonts. You will not experience this problem if you use the TrueType fonts. Users who have installed the PostScript fonts and disabled the TrueType versions may experience this issue.

Reason

Macintosh OS X draws the wrong glyphs for 8 characters in Euclid Symbol and 6 characters in MT Extra/Euclid Extra. This problem will also affect other symbolic PostScript fonts you may have (such as Adobe's Symbol, installed with InDesign CS). This is due to a bug with how Mac OS X handles symbolic fonts. This affects screen and printed output on OS X, but not necessarily EPS output. The MathType PostScript fonts and characters affected are:

Euclid Symbol:

infinity (replaced by bullet)

proportional to (replaced by mu)

not equal to (replaced by pi)

identical to (replaced by integral)

weierstrass 'p' (replaced by radical)

circled plus (replaced by approximately equal to)

superset of (replaced by ellipsis)

logical or (replaced by slash)

Euclid Extra/MT Extra:

integral loop (replaced by bullet)

unknown glyph (replaced by space)

'fi' ligature (replaced by apple)

dotless i (replaced by superscript 3)

fraction slash (replaced by caron)

double acute accent (replaced by degree)

Demonstrating the problem without involving MathType or its fonts

This problem can also be reproduced without using MathType or its fonts, thereby indicating that the underlying problem is not caused by MathType. If you are an engineer or support person without MathType interested in reproducing the problem, or you are just curious to see it outside of MathType, perform the following steps, which were tested with Mac OS X 10.3.4 and Microsoft Office X.

Install a PostScript version of the Symbol font and disable or remove the TrueType version (Adobe distributes a PostScript Symbol font).
Launch Word X.
Go to Insert | Symbol and select the Symbol font. In the corresponding character map, search for the ∞ (Infinity) symbol. You will likely not find this symbol (due to the bug), so find it at character position 165, Unicode character 61605. Select it and click Insert.
Notice in the Word document that the 'Infinity' symbol has been substituted by an incorrect character, possibly the degree symbol or bullet.
Print the Word document and see that the same character(s) print incorrectly as well.

Solution

There is no real solution to this problem until the bug is fixed by Apple. A workaround, when it affects MathType, is to use the TrueType versions of the MathType fonts. These fonts are installed by default, so if you have replaced these with the PostScript versions, just replace the TrueType versions back again. An easier way to manage fonts in OS X 10.3 and later is to use FontBook to disable the MathType-related PostScript fonts when using MathType and enable the TrueType versions.

Getting This Problem Addressed by Apple

While we have reported this bug to Apple (bug #3574571), we encourage all users to report it to them as well so that Apple can appreciate the need to devote additional programming resources to it. It is important that their customers continue to report their own experience so that Apple understands how widespread this problem is. Most often, reports from actual users have a greater impact on bugs getting addressed than those submitted by independent software vendors such as us. Design Science is committed to working with Apple to help resolve this problem.

You can report this problem and any other problems you have with the Macintosh OS at http://www.apple.com/support/.
To report and track bugs via the Apple Developer Connection, visit http://developer.apple.com/bugreporter/index.html.

If you can contact their Technical Support Staff by telephone your report will likely carry even more weight. You can contact Apple Technical Support at (800) 275-2273.

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