No symbol font in TextEdit? Or webdings? Or dingbats?

[macusergal]

Hi,

I just switched back to the mac from years with PCs (employer supplied). But I'm having trouble. I wanted to create a simple chart in OmniGraffle but when I chose "Show Fonts" and selected "Symbol" I didn't get the font. I could not get Webdings or Zapf Dingbats either. So then I tried different fonts in TextEdit. Same problem. TextEdit will let me choose many fonts but not these or a number of others. What is happening here? I'm feeling really frustrated with my new 15" AlPowerBook and I was thinking I'd be excited. Any help would be apreciated. In the meantime I'll have to use Freehand for the diagram since it doesn't rely on the built in font display.

-MacUserGal

 

[michaelrjohnson]

Wow, that's odd. I've been using OS X for 4 years now, and I have never noticed that. I just attempted to do the same, and I couldnt' do it either. Perhaps someone here knows why, because I have no idea.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

Hi,

I just switched back to the mac from years with PCs (employer supplied). But I'm having trouble. I wanted to create a simple chart in OmniGraffle but when I chose "Show Fonts" and selected "Symbol" I didn't get the font. I could not get Webdings or Zapf Dingbats either. So then I tried different fonts in TextEdit. Same problem. TextEdit will let me choose many fonts but not these or a number of others. What is happening here? I'm feeling really frustrated with my new 15" AlPowerBook and I was thinking I'd be excited. Any help would be apreciated. In the meantime I'll have to use Freehand for the diagram since it doesn't rely on the built in font display.

-MacUserGal

I found the cause - it's because those fonts are Unicode-enabled, like most other fonts in Mac OS X - thus the symbols are stored in the Unicode table (and accessed from the "Special Characters..." option in the Edit menu) rather than replacing the letters like the Mac OS 9 version did. Mac OS X will let you select those fonts - you just need to look in the Unicode palette for the symbols you want.

 

[macusergal]

Thanks for the info. I liked being able to just type the letter t to get a tau in Symbol but unicode the special characters option offers a lot of benefits. The simplest being able to see all the other fonts with a tau character. Many of which I prefer.

Now I'm curious how Freehand handles things since I can still simply type t and get a tau in that application. But not curious enough to spend time on it. I just want to be able to do the work right now.