iserting special symbols

[JanAdam]

Working on a book I am struggling with my need to use several special symbols.

Assume that I am writing a chemical reaction with a chemical formula of a
species that is sitting at a solid/liquid interface. To denote that it is a
surface species I use a symbol that looks like a vertical line with a hatched
area just left of the line. I have created such a symbol using eudcedit and
it does the job just fine but … (There always seems to be a *but*). So in
this case it is that it does the job for me only.

My questions are as follows (in whatever order):
i. suppose I send the file to somebody else, who does not have my new
symbol, or has assigned a different character to the same Unicode value. What
do I do? Can I embed my special characters with the document?
ii. is it possible to have my special symbols visible in *insert symbol*
dialog such that I can assign a shortcut key to it, instead of typing, say
E000 and Alt+X?
iii. when I try to print my document to PDF, my very special symbols are not
converted to PDF. There are simply blank spaces there. Is there any way
around it?
iv. Any relevant comments on using special symbols, characters etc. and/or
refs to articles on the subject would be of help.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Font embedding might improve the situation both for Word documents and for
PDFs, but if that doesn't work, there are other options.

For example, you might be able to cobble something together from existing
symbols that would be universally available. See
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/General/InsertSpecChars.htm and
http://sbarnhill.mvps.org/WordFAQs/Overbar.htm for some techniques that
might help. There will still be some user requirements: if you create a
combined character that uses a character available only in Arial Unicode MS,
for example, then users would have to have that font installed. And if you
want users to be able to insert your character easily, you would need to
distribute the document as a template with the character stored as an
AutoText entry (AutoText can't be stored in documents).

Another possibility, if your symbol will be needed at only one font size,
would be to save it as a picture and then save that picture as an AutoText
entry.

 

[JanAdam]

Thank you Suzanne,
Reading your articles (they are great resources) prompted me to ask you one
more question:
Can I use my own defined symbol in Equation Editor? Actually I have MathType
5 installed. Same software but a bit more powerful. If it was possible then
the final equation is inserted as a graphic I believe, and it should do the
trick of portability. Or you would still need to embed the special character
font? I have sent a question on using my special characters in MathType to
their technical support on Monday and am still waiting for an answer.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Since MathType and Equation Editor use standard fonts, I suspect that you
would not be able to use your custom character in either one, but the
experts at Design Science will be better able to answer that question.

 

[Bob Mathews]

Can I use my own defined symbol in Equation Editor?
Actually I have MathType 5 installed. Same software but
a bit more powerful. If it was possible then the final
equation is inserted as a graphic I believe, and it should
do the trick of portability. Or you would still need to
embed the special character font? I have sent a question
on using my special characters in MathType to their
technical support on Monday and am still waiting for an
answer.

JanAdam, I apologize for the delay in getting a response from our
technical support team. I work at different location from them,
so I'm not sure what the problem was, but I know their record is
around 95% response within 24 hours, so it could be that they
didn't get the e-mail. Their e-mail address is
(e-mail address removed).

Regardless, I can answer your question. You can use your own
defined symbol in MathType if it is a font character that you
create. To do that, you'll need a software utility that will
allow you to design your own font or edit existing fonts. There
are several such utilities, so if you're not familiar with these,
you should be able to find one through an Internet search.

With regard to portability, even though MathType inserts
equations into Word in the form of graphics, they're graphics
that are created with fonts. Hence, the fonts are necessary in
order to re-create the equations when you send the document to
someone else. See our article "Sharing Documents Containing
MathType Equations", available at
http://www.dessci.com/en/support/mathtype/tsn/TSN50.htm for
instructions on embedding MathType fonts in a Word document.

If you have further questions, feel free to contact me directly,
or write Tech Support at the address above.

--
Bob Mathews
Director of Training
Design Science, Inc.
bobm at dessci.com
http://www.dessci.com/free.asp?free=news
FREE fully-functional 30-day evaluation of MathType 5
MathType, WebEQ, MathPlayer, MathFlow, Equation Editor, TeXaide

 

[JanAdam]

Thank you Bob,

What you say is looking very quite promising. I have already created my
additional characters (using EUDCEDIT editor that comes with Windows) and I
know their Unicode codes. They are all at E000 and a couple of following
locations. Thus creating the fonts is not a problem, it is using them in
MathType. I have spent several hours trying to find out how to insert, say a
character defined at E000 from within MathType. Of course MathType displays
all the standard symbols and various fonts installed on the computer, making
it possible to use them. However, I was not able to find out how to display
Unicode private area (E000-F8FF) and/or how to insert my own character. I
could do it in MS Word by typing E000 followed by Alt+X. But it does not work
in MathType.

If you could tell me how to do that, it would be just great. Then, I will
try to embed the font as Suzanne suggested and hopefully will have my problem
solved.

By the way, I did send my question to Design Science Support at the address
you wrote. Actually I clicked on the link to support on your web page.
Perhaps they are still working on it.

 

[Bob Mathews]

What you say is looking very quite promising. I have
already created my additional characters (using
EUDCEDIT editor that comes with Windows) and I
know their Unicode codes. They are all at E000 and
a couple of following locations.

I was wondering why you were using the Unicode private use area
(PUA) instead of just creating your own font and putting the
glyphs in the normal Plane 0 positions. Now I understand it's
because that's all EUDCEDIT is capable of. The problem here is
that MathType can't access the PUA. For example, Code2000 is a
popular Unicode-based math font. It has some characters in the
PUA, but they aren't available in MathType. This doesn't mean the
hours you've spent creating your own font glyphs in the PUA is
wasted time. Read on...

If you could tell me how to do that, it would be just
great. Then, I will try to embed the font as Suzanne
suggested and hopefully will have my problem solved.

What I'd recommend is using a commercially-available font
creator/editor such as FontCreator. There are no doubt others
available, and I'm not necessarily recommending FontCreator as
any better than any other product. It's just that it's the only
one I've ever used. It's available in a free 30-day full-featured
evaluation version at http://www.high-logic.com/download.html.

I was able to use FontCreator to create my own glyphs in my own
brand new font (which I named bobsfont.ttf). These glyphs were
available in MathType. I was also able to use FontCreator to open
a different font that had some of my own glyphs in the PUA. I cut
them from their PUA locations and pasted them into empty slots in
the "normal" positions of that font. Probably a better way to go
would be to copy them from the fonts you created using EUDCEDIT
and paste them into your new font. (It's possible in FontCreator
to have more than one font open at once.) I was able to do that
as well, and in both cases, these glyphs were usable in MathType.

Let me know how this goes.

By the way, I did send my question to Design Science Support
at the address you wrote. Actually I clicked on the link to
support
on your web page. Perhaps they are still working on it.

Hope so.

--
Bob Mathews
Director of Training
Design Science, Inc.
bobm at dessci.com
http://www.dessci.com/free.asp?free=news
FREE fully-functional 30-day evaluation of MathType 5
MathType, WebEQ, MathPlayer, MathFlow, Equation Editor, TeXaide

 

[JanAdam]

thanks a lot Bob. I will try to follow on it and will report to the same
thread when done. It may be in a few days as there are others things to do as
well.

 

[JanAdam]

Thank you Bob,

Finally I managed to achieve what I wanted. Not that it was without numerous
tries and errors. But, installing the trial version of FontCreator and
spending few hours in trying to understand it a bit, I have created and
installed a new font file with a few of my glyphs plus most of the symbols I
frequently use (copied from other symbol fonts). Actually I did not copy the
glyphs but recreated them from scratch as the Creator give much better
images. I could then create shortcuts to the new characters both in Word and
MathType. With embedding used fonts in MS Word I could print documents to PDF
and e-mail them, preserving the new characters.

The important thing, if anybody wants to do something similar, is to place
the newly created glyphs into empty locations or overwrite existing
characters such that the new glyphs map to *normal* rather than to Unicode
Private Use Area.

Thank you again,

 

[Bob Mathews]

JanAdam, thanks for writing back to let us know about your
success. No doubt others in a similar situation will be able to
learn from your experience.

--
Bob Mathews
Director of Training
Design Science, Inc.
bobm at dessci.com
http://www.dessci.com/free.asp?free=news
FREE fully-functional 30-day evaluation of MathType 5
MathType, WebEQ, MathPlayer, MathFlow, Equation Editor, TeXaide