Unicode question

[beachycove]

I recently had a document sent to me for editing in Word 2007 format (.docx), which I converted down to "compatibility" format (.doc) on a X.5 iMac at work, using Word 2008. I brought the document home, and worked with it in MacOS 8.6 and Word 2001 on a PB2400c. Halfway through, I realized that there were a small range of Unicode characters (mainly from Turkish author names in footnotes) that did not display; there was only underlining, spaces and gibberish.

The material was being edited for publication, and by the time I arrived at the problem of the Turkish names twenty pages into the essay, I had already done a fair bit of work on the text. Not wanting to repeat the work, with some trepidation I opened the now-edited .doc file and converted it bac to .docx format again in Word 2008 to see what was left of the missing text, and found to my relief that the Unicode characters in question had all been preserved.

I gather that Unicode is in the MacOS from 8.5 on, but that it is not really used by most applications. I also gather that Word 2001 specifically is not Unicode-aware. But the system apparently preserved the characters in question.

Can anyone explain in laypersons terms what likely happened here? I am especially interested to know whether it would be "safe" for me to work in this way again.

 

[Cory5412]

Microsoft uses different default fonts in the 2007 file formats, do you know if the font that the document had been using exists on the systems you were using? The system may have done a substitution, and not known what to do with some of the unicode characters, despite the fact that they probably existed in Times or another font that was already on the 2400c.

What I'd try is making sure all of the fonts that are in use on the work computers are installed on the 2400c, or that your document comes to the 2400c that's already installed on it.