Problem displaying thai font characters in multiline text

[Paulio]

The attached drawing contains a line of text with some Thai characters. It's a piece of single line text:

If we then use the express tool to convert it to MText, it then looks like this:

It's the same text style with the same font.

We have the same problem with single or multiline attributes in blocks.

This single line one displays fine:

But the multiline attribute with the same text looks like this:

Oddly, while editing the attribute, it displays correctly:

But then displays the question marks again when the edit is complete.

After some Googling, general opinion seems to be that this is caused by a missing font but I'm thinking, if that was the case, it wouldn't display as single line correctly either?

This is AutoCAD 2019 on Windows 10 (UK).

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

[Cadologist]

So I downloaded your drawing and opened it on my machine, and the Thai characters appeared correctly (no question marks) on both the blocks, the one using single line, and also on the one using multi-line. When editing the block attribute, the question marks did not appear on my screen/computer.

I think you are correct or going down the correct path with the 'missing font' idea however not sure why it would show correctly on one and not on the other. Odd issue....

There are quite a few posts on the Autodesk Knowledge Network regarding fonts being replaced with ?????? and most posts tend to relate the issue to a missing font file (SHX). Also.... MTEXT objects can support multiple languages, so that might be the reason why it shows different than the single line (single line text objects cannot support multiple languages) as mentioned in the link below.

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Chines...

Probably not helping much here, but definitely curious about this issue, especially the part where it shows fine in single but different in multiple. Good luck!!

[pendean]

You need to source font installed on your PC: since most here will also not have it we will all have the same problem.

Reach out to the file creator for the correct font file: "googling" is not the solution.

[Paulio]

Hi Chad,

Yes I probably found the same posts you refer to as a result of my "Googling" and if it hadn't displayed correctly at all I would probably have stopped there and attempted to get the missing font on my machine. It was the fact that the single line displayed correctly that made me question whether the missing font was the problem.

Thanks

Paul

[Cadologist]

Yeah that's the part I find interesting..... why does it show correctly in one piece of text and not the other? If the font was missing shouldn't it not display correctly on BOTH types of annotation? Also, not sure why but on my machine, and my VM (tested it on there - completely fresh Windows/ACAD installs) it showed up correctly. The company I am at  (located in Canada) does no international work regarding different languages so I highly doubt they would have installed some extended font package to cover Thai, etc. Not certain however.... but my fresh OOTB installs on my VM, the text shows up on both strings without any ???? marks. Anyway, thanks for messaging back, I will follow this one as I am very curious if this is a missing font (seems probable) or something with how ACAD interprets single line vs. multi-line from a combination-language approach (English and Thai characters). Again good luck Paulio!

[Paulio]

Hmm, that is interesting.

If it is a missing font, I'm happy to accept that as the solution, I'd just like to understand why AutoCAD seemingly is able to display the characters without the font present in some instances but can't in others, and why it displays correctly for you with no additional fonts installed.

And (@pendean) asking the originator of the drawing for the font is not the solution; we are the originator. The text string came from a database table.

Maybe someone from AutoDesk will be able to shed some more light on what might be causing it.

Thanks for your efforts.

[pendean]

Incorrect font being used:

Style/Font it should be:

Missing font in your file being reported:

[Paulio]

OK, we're getting somewhere.

I'm not seeing the same thing you are when editing the text though.

If I change the font of the question marks to Leelawadee UI, I get something closer to what it should look like.

It still doesn't answer the question, why AutoCAD can display the single line perfectly well when it's apparently using the Standard text style which has an assigned font of Arial:

If the Cordia font name is somehow embedded into the single line text string and not accessible through the interface anywhere, that would explain why it then showed up when it was converted to Multiline text. My problem is that if the Cordia was embedded, it shouldn't display the single line properly either. It's surely not the case that AutoCAD just randomly picks a font for those characters when it converts to Multiline text, so it must be in there somewhere.

So the single/multiline question remains but your answer at least gets us past the problem. Thank you.

[padee.innovation]

Copy cordia (ttf) from other pc install to autocad pc at windows floder font..fixed done.