RE: macron

["Gilda Spitz" <gaspitz -at- longview -dot- com>]

Thanks to all who replied to my question about creating the macron sign in Framemaker. The bottom line seems to be that you need a Unicode font. Oh well. 

Here are the replies in more detail:

>From Nancy Kaminski :

There are fonts with phonetic characters in them---I found Times
Phonetic in my way-too-big collection of Adobe Type 1 fonts. These
contain the macron symbol.

>From Jenny Berger:

You might want to try using a font created to display the Maori language, 
as it uses macrons. The following page has Maori fonts for download:

http://www.tki.org.nz/e/tki/help/maorifont.php

Also, if you need to use macrons in web pages, check out the "UTF-8 
macrons for the web" section at  http://www.dream-it.co.nz/.

....

I thought it might a simple matter of using the Windows Character Map to 
get a keyboard combination that you could use in Framemaker...but 
apparently, there's more to it than that. I researched a little bit more 
and found that the macron is a Unicode character -- Word and Notepad are 
Unicode-aware apps, but Framemaker is not. I checked out Adobe support to 
see what they had to say about Unicode characters, and their technote says 
that Framemaker does not support non-roman characters that are not part of 
the ISO-1 Basic Latin set. This character set does not include macrons; 
hence, Framemaker does not render them. So, even though Verdana, Arial, 
and Times New Roman have macronized characters, Framemaker does not 
recognize them.

However, I did notice that Framemaker renders macronized characters if 
they are part of a mathematical equation. The caveat is that you have to 
type the letters in an equation frame, and the macronized characters are 
italicized. 

>From Beth Agnew:

The key sequence for a macron by itself is Ctrl+qx. That gives you the
> bar, but doesn't position it over the vowel.
>
> For the specific vowel + macron combination, you'll need to use the ANSI
> code for the vowel you want, e.g., long lowercase "a" =  0101
> (To refresh the memories of those who don't often use the ANSI number,
> with Num Lock on press and hold Alt while typing the ANSI number
> (including the leading zero) on the numeric keypad.)
>
> Plus, as others have pointed out, you'll need a Unicode font that
> contains the symbols you want to use. Be aware that your output media
> must support Unicode as well. Most do, these days, but some older
> printers may not.
>
> This document may also be helpful:
> http://partners.adobe.com/asn/framemaker/ PDFS/Character_Sets.pdf
>
> Another option is to use FontLab (www.fontlab.com) to customize your
> font to include macrons.

...

I always have trouble with that ANSI stuff myself. I could get some of them
to work, but when it comes to the ones with letters in them, I can't get
them. I'm not sure why, either. There must be something that we're missing.
I think the trick is having a Unicode font.



Gilda Spitz
Manager, Documentation Services
Longview Solutions
905.940.1510 Ext. 5314 
gaspitz -at- longview -dot- com


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