Fonts

So that boils down to, you can't select a character and then choose Zapf Dingbats from the font menu and have it produce a dingbat on the screen--and then print it?

That was a very technical explanation and I hope I have its gist fairly accurately. The problem is I am but a simple, somewhat nerdy, graphic designer who lost track of the whole thing after I moved to the suburbs when my kids came along and had to figure out how to use an electric hedge trimmer without severing the extension cord. Fortunately I've mastered the hedge trimmer but, for the most part, lost interest in computers in the interim, being the parent of at least one particular heck-raiser (boy are they strict around here--can't even say ****) of a boy, and now that they are older (and I've completely lost control of the heck-raiser), I am dipping my toe back in.

So you can see my background and my prejudices. I now live in a townhouse that requires no lawn maintenance on my part and, having only started to have time to re-enter the fold as it were, just want to use a dingbat without going through more steps than are necessary. If I read you right, it seems like the whole thing's been a mess since 1990 or so. But back then I had my dingbats anyway and don't now and it makes me sad.

Anyway, I love Pages regardless of this quirky dingbat issue. I've almost completely given up Word and that is a blessing.

What do you want in its place? The limited number of keys on a normal keyboard makes it hard to cover everything in Unicode that way, so a palette like that is probably essential.

If you say so, but all I want is to select a character and change it to a dingbat from the Font menu without having to bother with an inconvenient palette. That's what I'd have in its place--you know, how it's worked since 1986 or so. I don't mean to be facetious, or sound like a whiny complainer +("I want my font-selecting method back now, or I'll hold my breath!")+. I just became frustrated when I lost about $130 of billable time trying to put a dingbat where a client said it should go. I became so obsessed that I forgot to just go ahead and use Word and come back to it when I had time, so I'm not blaming Apple or anyone else, really. I just have questions (and am $130 poorer, but that's neither here nor there).

all I want is to select a character and change it to a dingbat from the Font menu without having to bother with an inconvenient palette. That's what I'd have in its place--you know, how it's worked since 1986 or so.

You may be able to go back to 1986 by installing a pre-Unicode dingbat font, e.g. one which works in Word X or AppleWorks, and using that instead of the one provided with OS X. Whether others viewing your text on different machines will see the dingbat will not be predictable, however.

Apple's own info for users about the changes regarding dingbats in OS X are in

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1518

Andrew

If you are using the dingbat character as a bullet you do know you can set that in:

+Inspector > Text (T) > List > Bullets & Numbering > Text Bullets > paste in the character you want+

Alternatively you can find it once and search and replace all the instances you want changed.

Or cut and paste.

There is an advantage to having the character predictably appear as it should, I have seen many documents, usually riddled with other errors as well, where the "a" has been incorrectly formatted and does not appear as the intended dingbat.

Peter