[designbc]

Coming from a PC world, I'm having a hard time trying to find how to type some special characters that don't show in Key Caps.
Usually in Windows I use the Alt + XXXX combinations.
Is there anything like that in Mac? I'm sure there is.
I'm tryinf to type characters like ¼, ½ (1/4 and 1/2) and they don't show in Key Caps.

[carnagex2000]

Easy enough, open System Preferences, now click on International. Now click on the tab called Input, now put a check mark next to Character Palette. Now you'll notice at the top of your desktop there is an american flag, click on it and select Character Palette, Now once your in the Character Palette, in the left where it says View: select View: All Now in the on the left side scroll down till you see the palette called Number Forms You'll see all the 1/2 symols. (to use just click the symbol you want and at the bottom right, hit insert)

[designbc]

That's in OS X right? Well, I need it for OS 9 as well...

[carnagex2000]

in OS9 open up HELP and type in special characters (I belive it has something to do with your Key Caps---its been a while since i used OS9)

[designbc]

That's exactly what I did first, but I couldn't figure it out.

[MikeM33]

Having been a long-time OS 9 user I really had no idea OSX supported those characters. If you're working in a certain application you might want to see if there's some tricks specific to that app to make the superscript/subscript version of those fractions (assuming that's your aim here).

Other than that, there are font sets out there that actually contain these characters. You can also just create 'em by the way I usually have (by simply superscripting and subscripting, altering the sizes a bit, etc., etc) Of course this method is very time consuming especially if you'll be dealing with alot of these special characters. I used to know the shortcut for the "/" character in the fractions (it's not the one you see on your keyboard by the way) but I forgot it.

I'd check the manual of whatever application your doing this in to see if there's some sort of chart for special characters. I know the Quark manual has a pretty extensive listing for them, but I don't know if "true" fractions are in there or not.

MikeM

[andi*pandi]

in quark, fractions: 1 (superscript it) <shift-option-1> (for Official Fraction Bar, better than slash mark) and 2 (subscript it).

there are some fonts with built in fractions, but otherwise, here it tis.