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Nisus Writer’s handling of dingbat fonts (for example, Zapf Dingbats) is frustrating and inconsistent.

Some OS X applications display dingbats, others don’t. According to Apple KnowledgeIndex Articles 106731 and 151626:
“In a Unicode system, the special characters in the Symbol and Zapf Dingbats fonts have their own unique Unicode character codes. Typing a character like “A” does not work when these fonts are used with Unicode, as the fonts don’t contain an “A” character. [Use] the Symbol and Dingbats keyboards... to type the correct Unicode characters for these two fonts.
“Choose Edit > Special Characters to open the Character Palette.
“This menu item is only available in applications that were specifically designed to work with Mac OS X (native applications).”

Two things don’t compute here:

(1) TextEdit is a native application, yet there is no Special Characters menu item.
(2) All Microsoft applications and BBEdit apply Zapf Dingbats without any tricks -- no special menu, no using the international keyboard pallete. It just works.
So how can other applications use the Unicode excuse?
(3) NWX thinks characters formatted as dingbats aren’t formatted at all, even if you use the special System Character Palette to insert dingbats into a Nisus document. If the insertion point is in neighboring text in any other font, selecting “Select Range” will also select the dingbat characters, no matter what the neighboring font is. In other words, it’s all the same to NWX.

Again, MS Word and BBEdit don’t have this problem.

hatchmo wrote:Two things don’t compute here:

(1) TextEdit is a native application, yet there is no Special Characters menu item.

Yes it does. Look under the Edit menu.

(3) NWX thinks characters formatted as dingbats aren’t formatted at all, even if you use the special System Character Palette to insert dingbats into a Nisus document. If the insertion point is in neighboring text in any other font, selecting “Select Range” will also select the dingbat characters, no matter what the neighboring font is. In other words, it’s all the same to NWX.

Well I understand that you (and I) are used to having this work differently, I think I like this system better. If I am writing something and I need a greek letter but there are no greek letters in the font I am currently using do I really want those greek letters to be labeled as being in a different style? If I change my document from Geneva to Times, do I really want to have to carefully deselect one or two greek letters so that they don't turn into Times also?

Again, MS Word and BBEdit don’t have this problem.

Those aren't Cocoa programs. TextEdit works the same way NWE does. While I also have had some trouble getting used to it, I see that the new way will have clear advantages once I do.

I think I like this system better. If I am writing something and I need a greek letter but there are no greek letters in the font I am currently using do I really want those greek letters to be labeled as being in a different style? If I change my document from Geneva to Times, do I really want to have to carefully deselect one or two greek letters so that they don't turn into Times also?

I see your point. That does make sense. And I appreciate your explanation about Cocoa vs. Carbon.

I find it amazing that Cooca is worse than Carbon in this regard. In other words, it is easier for us to use symbol fonts in the old legacy applications. How long are we going to have to resort to a Virtual Keyboard just to see symbols?

Maybe you would would like to try my Symbol and Dingbats keyboard layouts?

http://jardar.nvg.org/mac/tastatur/

My review of Word 2004 (Test Drive) may also touch upon the issue discussed here: The classic input method for e.g. Greek letters (by changing the font) is allowed in that application, but this makes the documents incompatible with anything else than Word 2004 for MacOS X. (I don't know if this is true for other versions than the Test Drive version.)

http://jardar.nvg.org/mac/word2004.html

JBL wrote:

hatchmo wrote:Two things don’t compute here:

(1) TextEdit is a native application, yet there is no Special Characters menu item.

Yes it does. Look under the Edit menu.

I do not have a Special Characters menu item under Edit (or anywhere else) in either TextEdit or NWE. Sorry, hatchmo is right: for some of us it is simply not there. I would be happy to have anyone tell me how to turn it on. By the way, I already know how to turn on the keyboard menu in the menu bar, but I don't want to do that as the right side of the menu bar is already too crowded on my powerbook. I did test to see whether Special characters shows up when the keyboard menu is activated, but it doesn't... Oh, and I am using MacOS 10.3.5 so that isn't the problem, either.