Does MS Word on the Mac support Unicode's combining diacritics? I'm
specifically interested in the combinations x + circumflex and X +
circumflex (the Unicode hexadecimal code point for circumflex is 0302).
Does anybody know how to input these in MS Word for Mac?
I should clarify that I'm not merely looking for a way to render an x
with a circumflex, but specifically one whose underlying representation
is x + unicode 0302.
Thanks for any information you might have,
Just the same as in TextEdit. But you absolutely need Word 2004. It cannot
be done in Word X.
I'm going to tell you how to do it in Tiger (OS 10.4). It's slightly
different in Panther, and I may forget a bit (some OS features have
different names and layouts), but can be done equally well there.
In System Preferences/International/Input Menu (it might be called "Keyboard
Menu" in Panther), check the "Character Palette" option. Also add any
foreign keyboards you may need. (And if so, check "Keyboard Viewer" too.)
You'll now find an Input (Keyboard) menu over on the right-hand side of the
main menu bar, next to the clock, in all apps. It shows the flag of the
language/country of your default system (mine is US flag).
In that menu. select "Show Character Palette". Set the View popup to Code
Tables (in Tiger. In Panther I don't think that popup exists, the default is
fine.) Click on the "Unicode" tab. (In Panther it may be a popup, not tab.
Select Unicode.)
In the (lower, in Tiger) table, scroll to 0300. (Or you can scroll to
"Diacritical Marks" in the upper table.) You'll see that in column "2"
(actually the third column, they start at 0), which is 0302, you'll see your
COMBINIMG CIRCUMFLEX. By default, Lucida Grande will be the font. Leave it
there for the moment.
In Word, first set your font to Lucida Grande. Then type an "x". Now, in the
Character Palette, which floats above all apps, with the 0302 circumflex
character still selected, click the "Insert" button at lower right. You'll
see that - because it IS a combining character - it appears over the "x" in
Word.
Now this will be great if your document is only ever going to be opened on a
Mac. All Macs with OS X have Lucida Grande. But Windows computers don't.
They will substitute some other font (just for this character), hopefully a
similar-looking font, but they will get the character correct. There are
other fonts supplied by (I think) Apple - like Baskerville - that do it
right too. There might be a better chance of a good font substitution on
Windows in an Apple font that you know also exists as a Microsoft font on
Windows (though it might not be identical there). Some Apple fonts do not do
the combining , some do - you have to try them out.
If it matters to you to have the same font on Windows and Mac, you'd want to
find a Microsoft font in Word Mac that contains this Unicode character, and
use that font. Because it's an obscure character, most fonts do not have it.
Microsoft's so-called Unicode fonts are not by any means complete -
especially not the European fonts. Times New Roman does not have this
character, nor Verdana, MS Trebuchet. If you are in TNR and insert the
character from the palette, you just get a blank square. (It will probably
display correctly on Word Windows, mind you!) There are a few MS fonts
represented: you can see which fonts have your character in the
"Collections" panel of the palette. There are a number of Asian MS fonts
(the .ttf fonts like MS Gothic and MS Mincho) there, but unfortunately when
you insert it from the palette it doesn't combine. So you need to use an
Apple font that does the combining, and hope that the font substitution on
Windows won't look too bad. At least the combining character should appear
there.
--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <
http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
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http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>
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PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.
