At 20:51 07/08/2016 +0100, Gillian Bonly wrote:
I am very frustrated in trying to find answers to questions about
Open Office, it all sounds too technical.
Your problem here sounds more to do with your computer hardware or
operating system, in fact.
The main problem I have at present is trying to type in text the
symbols found in music: I have a sharp symbol on my keyboard but
none of the others, particularly needing the flat symbol.
Actually, what you have on your keyboard is a hash mark (U+0023), not
the same as a musical sharp sign (U+266F) - though you may be
satisfied in using one for the other. A good font should contain a
proper sharp sign as well and flat and natural signs.
I have looked all over the character map as advised in your Help but
it just isn't there.
I'm not sure what you mean by the character map, as there appears to
be nothing called this in OpenOffice. You may be referring to a
facility on your laptop that allows you to access characters not
otherwise available on the keyboard. But there is a way to do this
from within OpenOffice: go to Insert | Special Character... . If you
scroll down, you will find the character there if it exists in your
chosen font. But note that no font has all available characters and
many may not have the musical signs you need. You can select the font
at the top of the Special Characters panel.
At the bottom right of the Special Characters panel you will see the
Unicode code point - a four-digit hexadecimal number - for the
character you have currently located in the main panel. The
characters you are likely to be interested in are:
U+2669 Quarter note (= crotchet)
U+266A Eighth note (= quaver)
U+266B Beamed eighth notes (= beamed quavers)
U+266C Beamed sixteenth notes (= beamed semiquavers)
U+266D Music flat sign
U+266E Music natural sign
U+266F Music sharp sign
U+1D12A Musical symbol double sharp
U+1D12B Musical symbol double flat
My Times New Roman font, for example, has only quaver and semiquaver,
not any of the signs you want. My DejaVu Sans has the first seven but
not the last two. Some other fonts have none of these. Your fonts may
differ. It's a simple fact that if your fonts do not include the
relevant glyphs, you simply cannot print them. That's a font problem,
not an OpenOffice problem. Your inserted character can be in a
different font from surrounding text, of course.
The only way I can do it is to find an old document containing it
and copy and paste. Surely this can't be right?
Indeed not.
I am using an HP Pavilion x360 laptop with windows 10. Like many
modern laptops it has no number pad or num lock key so I can't
access Alt codes.
That's unfortunate. Many laptops have hidden numeric keypads on the
7, 8, 9, U, I, O, J, K, L, and M keys - but unfortunately not yours, it seems.
If you need a flat or sharp sign very infrequently, it may be easiest
to insert it using the Special Characters panel each time. But if you
need these frequently, you may find it easier to type a code of your
choice and replace these globally after you have finished entering
your text. For example, you could enter #f, #n, and #s for flat,
natural, and sharp and the replace these with the proper characters
using Find & Replace in one go at the end.
I trust this helps.
Brian Barker
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected]
For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
