Expert: Amy - 8/2/2006

Question
Hi Amy

I have Illustrator 10 on PC. I have a problem converting some fonts/languages into EPS outlines. I am opening Word doc in Illustrator and it results into question marks instead of letters. This happens mainly with Russian phrases written in Italics. Some phrases however typed in non-Italic Russian do convert fine into Illustrator. What can I do to make it work right?

On 6/22/2005 you were asked a similar question.
I couldn't find an answer for it though. And I do not have  InDesign.

Thank you!


Answer
Hi Tatiana,

Cyrillic fonts in English versions of Illustrator is a tricky subject.

Adobe Illustrator (ENGLISH VERSION) supports only fonts using the ISO Latin-1 character set. Most Cyrillic fonts use a different character set. Illustrator does not support the character sets of Cyrillic fonts... even when you are using a language kit or localized version of the operating system.

I don't know what font your cyrillic text is in but I am guessing that you are trying to paste a Unicode font into AI, a program that doesn't fully support Unicode.

One person has written a whole website about problems like this.  Check out this page of his all-encompassing site:
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PaulGor/cp_e.htm#fromUni

Try that "intermediate application' solution involving UniPad. That might work. Other people suggest pasting into PhotoShop first, then into Illustrator. It's worth a shot, I guess.

If you've got a budget for it, another answer is to get your hands on a Russian version of Illustrator.

Good luck.
Amy Pace