Foreign fonts don't display or print

Question

There are fonts that install with Mac OS that use non-Roman characters, e.g., Japanese, Hindu, and Korean. There is also a Greek font called Symbol. In the case of Symbol and some others, selecting the font means you get that font onscreen and at the printer. In others, for some reason, that doesn't happen. You select the font, e.g., Geeza Pro, Naskh, and Arial Hebrew, and what you get onscreen is Roman type. I'm trying to use a Greek font other than Symbol; I loaded it so that it shows up in Illustrator's list, but when I type with it, I get plain old vanilla Roman. What am I doing wrong or not doing at all? What does it take to make the font work? I believe it's a Truetype font, if that matters.

Answer 1

What am I doing wrong or not doing at all? What does it take to make the font work?
To type in another script on all modern computers you need to change the keyboard layout, not the font. You go to system prefs/language & text/input sources and check the boxes for the ones you want, plus the box for "Show Input Menu in Menu Bar." Then you go to the "flag" menu at the top right of the screen and choose your language and type. The font takes care of itself.
An exception is if you have a old non-Unicode Symbol font on your machine. This maps some greek stuff used in math to the normal latin character positions, so changing the font will change the characters. But it is best not to use this kind of Symbol, because there is no guarantee that any modern computer will display greek instead of the latin dictated by current standards. Instead for greek you should use the greek keyboard layout provided.