Math/statistical symbols?

As far as I know, Pages doesn't give us the ability to superpose two characters.

I didn't found a mean character in the UNICODE characters list.

There are third party equation editors.
You may also try to achieve your goal with the program named Grapher which is delivered with our machines.

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE jeudi 24 juillet 2008 16:41:45)

In particular, I'm looking for a "mean" symbol (an x with a "bar" or line drawn above it).

Go to system prefs/international/input menu and check the box for US Extended, plus the box for "show input menu in Finder." Then select US Extended in the "flag" menu at the top right of the Finder.

Try typing x, then Option/alt + shift + a. x̄ It should look right in Lucida Grande but maybe not in other fonts.

Also you can type x, then open Character Palette (Edit > Special Characters), View = Code Tables, Tab = Unicode, go to 00000300 Combining Diacritical Marks, and double click on 0305 Combining Overline. x̅ Again how it looks will depend on the font.

When I searched for the 'mean' character I assumed that it was an uppercase X and I didn't found it.

Tom Gewecke wrote:
Also you can type x, then open Character Palette (Edit > Special Characters), View = Code Tables, Tab = Unicode, go to 00000300 Combining Diacritical Marks, and double click on 0305 Combining Overline. x̅ Again how it looks will depend on the font.

Whaoh, at least I learn what I never found in the beast.

I tested with Palatino which doesn't contain the character 036F, with the comining diacritical mark, it works perfectly .

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE jeudi 24 juillet 2008 19:26:01)

When I searched for the 'mean' character I assumed that it was an uppercase X and I didn't found it.

You are correct that there is no single "mean x" character, in Unicode -- you always need to have two characters to generate that, and how pretty it will look depends on the font and the app.

Tom,

Thanks for the lesson on using the Combining Unicode marks feature. I was unaware of that function, so I started out to address the OP's plan B question about creating a symbol. I'm glad that you posted before I finished.

I tried grabbing a symbol from other reference material and of course it didn't scale well since it was bit-mapped. Then, working at 400% View magnification, I experimented with combining a character in a Text Box with a Pages Shapes Line object, followed by Arrange > Group, Crop if necessary and Inserting as an Inline object. It's clear why you finished first. I was happy with the look of my result, but very relieved to see your method.

Jerry