Don Bouchard said:
In both the symbols (under Times Roman) and in the Character Map the
character code for the Greek small gamma is listed as 0383, the upper case
gamma is 0393. But when I use the Alt+0383 I get the upper case Gamma. How
can I get the lower case gamma using the character code rather than
"Insert Symbol?"
Hi Don
Lower-case gamma is actually U+03B3, not U+0383. It's a very easy mistake to
make (I speak from personal experience
I think U+0383 remains undefined, as of Unicode 5.0.
Since the code for lower-case gamma is not all-numeric, I don't think the
Alt-keypad input method can work (because it requires all numerical values).
If you are working in Microsoft Word, Word has its own nifty Unicode input
feature: just type 383 and then press Alt-x. The "383" will be turned into
lower cases gamma - this will work for any Unicode char, supported by your
current font.
For what it's worth, here's the technique I often use when working on
documents with many non-keyboard chars. I just keep Notepad running in the
background, with a text file I call "chars.txt" open. In this text file, I
have all my favourite German, scientific and Greek characters ready to
easily cut-n-paste. Character Map is a great tool, but you have to hunt
around for the char you want; whereas by having frequently used chars ready
in Notepad, I can alt-tab, find, copy, alt-tab back to my doc and paste, all
in a single automatic movement. My wife writes docs in Greek and French, so
she has the full multilingual keyboard stuff set up, and changes her whole
keyboard back and forth between English, French, Greek and Polytonic Greek,
as required. It works well for her; but it's overkill for my simple
requirements.
There are also may 3rd party tools you can use to map chars to keyboard
combinations. Alan Wood has compiled a useful list of resources, here:
http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/utilities_fonts.html
Hope it helps,
