[Framers] Inserting checkmark in a table cell (FM12)

[Fred Ridder]

One thing that is not intuitively obvious is that you cannot use the displayed Unicode character number when using the Windows Alt-key shortcut for entering extended characters.  The problem is that Unicode character numbers are always expressed in hexadecimal while the Alt-key shortcut works with the Windows Code Page 1252 character numbers, which are decimal numbers.  For example, the character for a lower-case N with tilde is Unicode character 00F1, but its Windows CP1252 character number is 0241 (i.e., 0xF1 equals decimal 241).

The converse is also true: one cannot use the CP1252 decimal number (the Alt-code number) when referencing Unicode character numbers.  (Actually, the first 9 characters, where the decimal and hexadecimal representations both require only a single digit, are identical in CP1252 and Unicode, but 9 points out of the 65,535 possible Unicode values is pretty trivial.)

For those of you who have not been mentally translating between decimal and hexadecimal for most of the last 25 years, the Windows calculator tool in "Programmer" mode makes this really easy.  Any value you enter in decimal, hexadecimal, octal, and binary is simultaneously displayed in all four radices (or radixes, if you prefer).

-FR

________________________________
From: Framers <framers-bounces+docudoc=hotmail.com at lists.frameusers.com> on behalf of Shmuel Wolfson <shmuelw1 at gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2020 5:59 AM
To: An email list for people using Adobe FrameMaker software. <framers at lists.frameusers.com>; Lin Sims <ljsims.ml at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Framers] Inserting checkmark in a table cell (FM12)

Maybe this is clear to some people, but I thought I might clarify this
since I just figured it out myself.

Alt+#### works for Unicode fonts as well, but only for the first 255
characters of the font. ANSI fonts are 8-bit fonts, which only have 255
characters. Unicode fonts have a very large number of characters, but
you can still use Alt+#### for the first 255 characters of the Unicode
font. In the Windows Character Map, if you select the Advanced view
checkbox, it shows whether the font is Unicode or another font type. For
Unicode fonts, it still shows the Alt keystroke at the bottom-right for
characters in the 255 range. Strangely enough, the Windows Character Map
doesn't show *all* the Alt keystrokes within in the 255 range, even
though they seem to all work.

So as Janet said, in the Windings2 font, ALT-0080 gives you a checkmark.

--
Shmuel Wolfson
Technical Writer
058-763-7133