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doug1120
doug1120
Known Participant
March 25, 2019
Answered

Searching for special characters

  • March 25, 2019
  • 2 replies
  • 6463 views

I need to use the Find/Change dialog to search for special characters (like the Greek symbol for Omega).  I can copy the character from the body of my document and paste it into the Find window, but in this case it pastes the letter W.  While this does find the Omegas accurately, it also finds any word with the letter W in it.

How can I search for special characters using the Find/Change dialog?

Thanks!

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer Winfried Reng

    Hi Doug,

    Probably you have Symbol or a similar font applied.

    Then FrameMaker cannot find this text.

    You could copy your Omega character into the clipboard and then search for "Text and Character Formats on Clipboard".

    Best regards

    Winfried

    2 replies

    doug1120
    doug1120Author
    Known Participant
    March 25, 2019

    I asked this question because my HTML was displaying the W instead of the Ω symbol when Firefox was the browser; Chrome, IE, and Edge all display the Ω accurately.

    Any idea why Firefox doesn't display the character when formatted with the Symbol font?

    Thanks,

    W
    Community Expert
    Winfried RengCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    March 25, 2019

    Hi Doug,

    Thank you for pointing me to this issue! I also just started to set up the conversion to HTML5.

    And I had not noticed yet that Firefox (which I also use) does not display the symbol font characters.

    My currect font is Google Open Sans, and this has the Ohm character.

    And this is converted nicely.

    Can you switch to a similar font with the Ohm character?

    I am pretty sure that e.g. Arial also this character.

    Of course you must test this also on your mobile devices.

    Best regards

    Winfried

    doug1120
    doug1120Author
    Known Participant
    March 25, 2019

    Yes, I'm currently switching fonts from Symbol to another font.  Not sure which just yet, but I've found that a good number of them support this symbol.  The same goes for Mu Epsilon, which Firefox also botches (display "me" instead of "UE").  I'm sure there are others, I just need to scan my docs for these special symbols.

    I consider them symbols, which is why I chose the Symbol font in the first place.  Sigh.

    Thanks!

    W
    Community Expert
    Winfried RengCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
    Community Expert
    March 25, 2019

    Hi Doug,

    Probably you have Symbol or a similar font applied.

    Then FrameMaker cannot find this text.

    You could copy your Omega character into the clipboard and then search for "Text and Character Formats on Clipboard".

    Best regards

    Winfried

    Bob_Niland
    Community Expert
    Bob_NilandCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    March 26, 2019

    Winfried: Probably you have Symbol or a similar font applied.

    More precisely, a legacy overlay/codepage font applied, where the character code points are in what is now the Unicode Basic Latin/Latin-1 Supplement (0x00-0xFF), but the glyphs in the assigned font are completely different. For non-Latin characters, things usually had to be done that way pre-Unicode (and pre-FM8), as there were usually only 256 codepoints to work with.

    Most of the glyphs in the legacy Windows and Zapf Symbol overlay fonts have codepoints in Unicode, and most competent Unicode fonts populate them. For revised or new FM documents, don't use overlay fonts where your body font has the Unicode character needed.

    Modern way: just type the character as an Ω, or enter it via a dialog as \u03a9

    It is sometimes necessary to use the old method, chiefly with glyphs never/not-yet adopted by Unicode, not populated in your Unicode fonts, or where the obligatory entity typeface itself covers only the 8-bit range. In such cases, I suggest implementing these characters as consistently identified variables, so that they are easy to batch-revise at some future font review.

    Suppose the corporate font is Woeful Sans, and lacks an Ω.

    Create a Character Format that is As-Is except for Family, referencing the font with the glyph, for example Liberation Sans.

    Create a Variable for the character, using the formal Unicode name where there is one:
    Name: U+03A9 GREEK CAPITAL LETTER OMEGA
    Definition: <Liberation Sans>\u03a9

    Never do it as a local override.

    doug1120
    doug1120Author
    Known Participant
    March 26, 2019

    How do I enter \u03a9 in a dialog?

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