Re: unable to insert symbol with latest version of Office

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In article <BF7FEC0C.B6350%berkowit@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Paul Berkowitz
<berkowit@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On 10/22/05 12:48 PM, in article 221020052048484730%nospam@xxxxxxxxx,
> "Elliott Roper" <nospam@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > 2004 has started using Unicode. X used "Apple Extended". It looks like
> > the insert symbol dialog expects the latter, at least in some fonts,
> > and then Word puts its fingers in its ears, and draws a box instead.
> >
> > My workaround is to abandon 'insert symbol' and to use the Mac's
> > "Character Palette" instead. It might be naughty, but it works.
>
> Actually, it's not naughty: it's recommended. That's how you're supposed to
> do it. It's not the Insert as such, but "Symbol font" (which is not actually
> a font), that does not work as it did in X and earlier for many (most) such
> characters. Use Character Palette to do the inserting - and you get
> literally thousands more characters to play with. I would recommend using
> Lucida Grande if the standard (but incomplete) Unicode Microsoft fonts
> (Verdana, Times New Roman, Trebuchet MS, Arial and some Asian fonts) don't
> have the character, even though Word Windows doesn't have Lucida Grande and
> will substitute another font (usually Arial Unicode) that does have the
> characters - unless absolute identical equivalence is required. Often the
> special inserted characters don't look enough like standard characters to
> make a difference. At least you know the character exists on both platforms,
> but of course needs 2004 on the Mac to display it if there is no "Apple
> Extended" character equivalent. If you're just sticking to characters that
> you used to be able to find in "Symbol font" in X, I think you should be OK
> everywhere, but I have not tested exhaustively.

Thanks Paul. That makes sense.
I did think that the MS supplied fonts were supposed to be identical
enough on both Mac and Windows.

Is there any way on a Mac to be assured that a Unicode glyph you are
thinking of inserting (via the character palette of course) is going to
work on the PC side? I was hoping that TNR and Arial would have filled
that role.

For completeness I woke up Word X. It opened my test document (unbidden
and with a "recovered"). As expected, the unicode glyphs were rendered
as underscores and insert symbol offered an apple, which inserted OK.

So insert symbol in Word 2004 really is broken. They should have taken
it out of the product and incorporated character palette properly.

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