Comments on: Type Any Unicode Character You Want in InDesign

By: Dan Brady

Dan Brady — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:38:08 +0000

This is useful. However it could possibly be more useful if you could specify a character style within the script. That way, for instance, I could insert special end-of-story characters from Wingdings etc with ease (a double-click in fact).

I wish I knew how to create these scripts - coding is a black art to me!

By: Sean

Sean — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 19:05:16 +0000

On a Mac, you can hold down the option key and get a bunch of these. For instance, option+N, then N again gives you ñ. option+E, then E again give you é, option+G gives you © (copyright symbol), etc.

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 14:24:31 +0000

Harbs, thanks for the note about the Mac OS character panel and other input methods. Those are very helpful. I wrote up something for Apple a year or two ago, which they posted on their apple.com/pro site.

By: Harbs

Harbs — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 12:06:07 +0000

Lee,

Besides Peter Kahrel’s great script mentioned above, the Windows method using “alt” can be used on Mac too.

The only catch is: you have to have the right keyboard selected. The keyboard is called “Unicode Hex Input” and it’s almost at the bottom of the list of language keyboards in the International Preferences. Just select the keyboard, and type option plus the unicode value as you would on a PC.

By: Lee

Lee — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 07:59:55 +0000

Hey, thanks so much for this info!

I do find it disappointing that Macs don’t actually allow you to type these fairly common symbols. On a PC, you can type any symbol using alt + the correct alt code.

Then again, Macs do make it a lot easier to type things like ellipses, dashes and apostrophes.

By: Christa

Christa — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 09:25:52 +0000

Thanks for the tip about searching glyphs! I wish I had known about that earlier I’ve had projects that would’ve been a little more fun. Specially the feature of it showing in which font the glyphs are…

By: Harbs

Harbs — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 21:18:53 +0000

For Mac users, there’s a often ignored utility that’s great for finding obscure glyphs: the “Character Palette” (the OS one, not the InDesign one).

To have it easily accessible, you should enable “show input menu in menu bar in the “International” system preferences. Also select “Character Palette” in the same window.

The really nice thing about this utility is that glyphs are searchable. For example: a couple of times on the U2U forum, people have asked how to get a “circle p”. If you happen to know that the name for that is “Sound Recording Copyright”, all you’d need to do is type “copy” into the search field on the bottom of the palette and one of the three glyphs which show up is the “circle p”.

You can then click on it, and besides the unicode value (2117), you can see all the fonts installed which contain the glyph. In this case there are only three on my computer: Apple Symbols, Lucida Grande, and Lucida Grande Bold.

Very, very useful for people who deal with far out glyphs…