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Participating Frequently
November 14, 2008
Question

Failure to insert special characters in Frame 8.04

  • November 14, 2008
  • 5 replies
  • 564 views
I'm having difficulties inserting two special characters (arrowleft and arrowright) in my document that I created using v8.02 and Windows XP on a Dell Vostro desktop. I have since upgraded to v8.04. I am using the key sequences given in the online Character Sets manual (Ctrl+q , and Ctrl+q .) but something totally different appears instead. I am using 11pt Times New Roman and haven't created any new character formats. I recall being able to do this in version 7.0 without a problem.

What could be causing this? Is there a workaround? I'd appreciate any assistance I can get.
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    5 replies

    Known Participant
    November 18, 2008
    Hi, Art,

    Could it work?

    I tried your method, but it didn't work. After I clicked Paste, nothing appeared in the insertion point. However, it worked in other word processing tool, like MS Word.
    Participating Frequently
    November 17, 2008
    Thanks for your help! I was finally able to insert those characters without a problem after installing the Quick100 utility.
    November 15, 2008
    One more possibility: Kenneth Benson mentioned a freebie utility called "Quick100" in this thread -- <br />http://www.adobeforums.com/webx?128@@.59b70524<br /><br />I've just tested Quick100 in FM8.0p277 and it seems to work perfectly to create unicode characters including the left and right arrow keys in Times New Roman.<br /><br />With Quick100 installed in the default mode (be sure to close FM or at least close and reopen after installing Quick100), to type the left arrow key:<br /><br />-- have NumLock ON<br />-- While holding Alt down, type the number keypad's decimal character and then type the unicode numbers in the number keypad. Release the Alt key.<br /><br />Interestingly, the instructions on the website say that they keyboard letters and numbers will also work, and that the utility can be set up to work with or without NumLock having to be on.<br /><br />The leftwards arrow as shown in Windows Charmap is U+2190, so this would be Alt plus 5 keystrokes: <Alt>.2190
    November 15, 2008
    Kimberly, it looks like you might have run into the keyboard shortcut changes in FM 8, as per p. 32 in the Character_sets.pdf:

    >> Unsupported keyboard shortcuts for the Symbol and Dingbats character set in FrameMaker 8

    >> The following table lists the Symbol and Dingbats character set supported in FrameMaker 7.x. In FrameMaker 8, you can insert the corresponding Unicode characters, but the keyboard shortcuts are no longer supported:
    Inspiring
    November 14, 2008
    Most likely, you're trying to type a Unicode character, but that particular font may not support or include Unicode characters -- FM started supporting Unicode in the 8.x series.

    Go into the Character Map Utility, select a Unicode font (you probably have Arial Unicode, at least), and use the Character Map's copy command to grab it. Them paste in FM.

    Art