alpha

[Guest]

Why has the alpha that I insert in my Word2003 document via "insert symbol"
an acute accent on it? I want an alpha without it as I would get with ALT-224.
Thanks in advance for your help.
H

 

[Graham Mayor]

Presumably you are selecting the wrong character?
ALT+224 = ?
ALT+0224 = à

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP

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[Guest]

Graham,
No, my problem is that the 'insert symbol' function only lets me introduce
alpha with acute accent, whereas I want one without. I don't have problems
with the ALT codes.
ALT-224 gives me an alpha. I shouldn't have mentioned that, it apparently is
confusing; I just wanted to demonstrate that my computer and screen are
basically capable of producing the alpha character.

BTW
What I see in your post is a question mark afterA224; I noticed that when I
use the code in outlook express I see an alpha when I write, but when the
post arrives and I read it, I see a question mark.
Here is my ALT-224 output: α
Of course this is an entirely different problem, sorry for hijacking my own
thread

 

[Graham Mayor]

Which font do you have selected in the insert symbol dialog? It would have
to be a unicode font with the extended character set. Try Arial.

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP

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[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I'm not sure where 224 is coming from. Alpha is character 97 in the Symbol
font (ASCII). In Unicode fonts it's 03B1. Character 0224 is not available in
most ordinary Unicode fonts; even Arial Unicode MS skips from 0217 to 0250.

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Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

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[Guest]

I tried many different fonts including arial.

Which font do you have selected in the insert symbol dialog? It would have
to be a unicode font with the extended character set. Try Arial.

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com

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[Graham Mayor]

Curioser and curioser

If I type ALT+224 I get alpha
If I check what has been inserted using the following macro

Sub ANSIValue()
S1$ = "Because the selected text contains"
S2$ = " characters, not all of the ANSI values will be displayed."
S3$ = "ANSI Value ("
S4$ = " characters in selection)"
S5$ = " character in selection)"
S6$ = "Text must be selected before this macro is run."
S7$ = "ANSI Value"
Dim strSel As String
Dim strNums As String
Dim LastFourChar As String
Dim iPos As Integer
strSel = Selection.Text
If Len(strSel) > 0 Then
For i = 1 To Len(strSel)
strNums = strNums + Str(Asc(Mid(strSel, i)))
Next i
strNums = LTrim(strNums)
If Len(strNums) > 255 Then
LastFourChar = Mid(strNums, 252, 4)
strNums = Left(strNums, 251) + Left(LastFourChar, _
4 - InStr(" ", LastFourChar))
MsgBox S1$ + Str(Len(strSel)) + S2$
End If
If Len(strSel) = 1 Then S4$ = S5$
MsgBox strNums, 0, S3$ + LTrim(Str(Len(strSel))) + S4$
Else
MsgBox S6$, 0, S7$
End If
End Sub

It reports character 97. However whatever I pick from the insert symbol
dialog is inserted as shown in that dialog?

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com

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[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I know that all "symbol" fonts are assigned the same Unicode character
number range, which may have something to do with this.

Also, the post is in UTF-8. I'm not sure what
http://titus.uni-frankfurt.de/unicode/inx/titu0d00.htm means, but it was the
first hit when I searched for "Unicode 224," and there do seem to be a lot
of 224s in there. The page at http://home.tiscali.nl/t876506/utf8tbl.html
may offer an explanation.

The actual Unicode character 224 appears to be something called "variation
selector": http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/e01cf/index.htm

Interesting stuff at http://www.alanwood.net/demos/symbol.html, but still no
explanation.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

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all may benefit.

 

[Guest]

To get back to my original question:
Could you guys tell me what you see when you do insert/symbol/ and then look
for the alpha? Do you just see an alpha or do you see an alpha with an acute
accent?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

It depends where we look for the alpha. In the Insert | Symbol dialog, the
"Greek small letter alpha with tonos" is character 03AC, and the "Greek
small letter alpha" is character 03B1, five spaces along from the previous
in the Basic Greek character subset. This is in "(normal text)." If one were
to insert the alpha from the Symbol font (which is *not* recommended), it is
character 97 (there are no accented characters).

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

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all may benefit.

 

[Guest]

OK, thanks, I don't know why I did not see it.

It depends where we look for the alpha. In the Insert | Symbol dialog, the
"Greek small letter alpha with tonos" is character 03AC, and the "Greek
small letter alpha" is character 03B1, five spaces along from the previous
in the Basic Greek character subset. This is in "(normal text)." If one were
to insert the alpha from the Symbol font (which is *not* recommended), it is
character 97 (there are no accented characters).

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.