How to Display Alpha Character

vampnramp · Post by **vampnramp** » Fri May 18, 2007 6:26 pm

Hi freinds, I am having a problem with special character Alpha. I would like to print alpha character in text pad. It would be great if any of you can resolve this at the earkiest. Thanks a lot in Advanc

tcebob · Post by **tcebob** » Mon May 21, 2007 2:13 pm

Depends on what font you are using. If it's a common one like Arial, it's U+03B1. Better to use Character Map, which comes with Windows. Find the character, copy it, and insert it into the text. You cannot mix fonts, so if you are using one without an alpha you are out of luck. (I use Bitstream Vera Sans Mono, which is great looking but *sob* no alpha.)

tcebob

SteveH · Post by **SteveH** » Mon May 21, 2007 3:38 pm

I use Bitstream Vera Sans Mono, which is great looking but *sob* no alpha

In that case I can make your day! If you like Bitstream Vera then switch to Deja Vu. These fonts are basically Vera but with support for a wider range of characters. To quote the description from the site:

Most DejaVu fonts are suitable for Latin (Western and Central European, African Latin and International Phonetic alphabets), Cyrillic (European) and Greek (Modern and Polytonic). Arabic, Armenian, Hebrew, Lao and Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics are currently in development and included in DejaVu Sans.

Hope this helps.

bveldkamp · Post by **bveldkamp** » Wed May 23, 2007 10:12 am

Alpha (α) is not included in Microsoft's "Western" character set (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_code_page). You could try setting your document's script to Greek, View > Document Properties > Font > Script, but you'd be missing some western European characters such as Ã©, Ã¨ and so on.

tcebob · Post by **tcebob** » Mon Jun 11, 2007 4:51 am

Steve H. --

I downloaded the DejaVu package and will try it out. One problem that might come up is TextPad's inability to use Unicode characters. Will let you know. Thanks for the tip.

tcebob

OwenBlacker · Post by **OwenBlacker** » Thu Jun 21, 2007 11:09 am

tcebob wrote:Steve H. --

I downloaded the DejaVu package and will try it out. One problem that might come up is TextPad's inability to use Unicode characters. Will let you know. Thanks for the tip.

tcebob

Indeed, despite the release notes saying they've fixed their Unicode support, I still get the message â€œWARNING: "filename" contains characters that do not exist in code page 1252 (ANSI - Latin I). They will be converted to the system default character, if you click OK.â€�. Clicking Cancel means the file-open fails.

Very disappointed; Unicode support has been lacking from TextPad since I first started using it, despite it being claimed in the documentation.

Someone really needs to fix this before I reluctantly uninstall TextPad and stop using it.