Font with musical flat

Question

Level 2

265 points

Font with musical flat

I'm afraid I've never quite figured out fonts in OSX (OS <10, keycaps and such, made sense to me.) I'm trying to find the character for a musical flat. The character palette shows the flat, but clicking on it does nothing. The character palette lists some fonts (Apple Symbol being one) that have this character, but the keyboard viewer doesn't show it, and when I do every variation of option, control, and shift I can think of, there's no sign of the flat character.

How do I get a musical flat symbol? And what's the point of the character palette if it shows characters that are wrong or unavailable?

MacBookPro 2.16, 1GB; iBook 2GHz 1GB;, Mac OS X (10.4.7), Nano 2G; Color iPod 40; original 5G iPod

Posted on Oct 14, 2006 4:05 PM

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Answer 1

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

118,282 points

Oct 14, 2006 5:26 PM in response to Richard T

The
character palette shows the flat, but clicking on it
does nothing.

You need to double click (or use the insert button) and it has to be in a modern Unicode app (not AppleWorks and not WordX).

The character palette lists some fonts
(Apple Symbol being one) that have this character,
but the keyboard viewer doesn't show it,

In OS X you can't use Keyboard Viewer for such characters, you must use the Character Palette.

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Answer 2

Richard T Author

Level 2

265 points

Oct 14, 2006 7:07 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

I understand it theoretically. Dragging and dropping should also work. But it doesn't, and I don't know what to do from there. I want to enter the character in Excel v.X. So I guess the proper question is, "How do I enter the flat character in Word or Excel?" And why does the tool that's available in OSX not help me do it? Character Palette tells me a font that should work, but I can't find the character in that font. This is quite frustrating. I'm used to the Mac helping me, not working against me.

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Answer 3

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

118,282 points

Oct 14, 2006 7:58 PM in response to Richard T

I want to enter the character
in Excel v.X. So I guess the proper question is, "How
do I enter the flat character in Word or Excel?"

As mentioned earlier, you must use a modern Unicode app, NOT WordX (or ExcelX either). The answer to your question is you need to upgrade to Excel2004. (There's a free trial available of Office2004).

And
why does the tool that's available in OSX not help me
do it?

Because you are using the wrong app. OS X is a Unicode system. MS OfficeX is just a slightly modified OS 9 app and cannot use a huge amount of OS X's features.

If you must use OfficeX, the only solution is to download a non-Unicode, OS 9 type music symbols font and set the app to that and see if you can enter what you need from the keyboard or via the Character Palette in glyph mode.

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Answer 4

IanB

Level 4

1,374 points

Oct 14, 2006 4:30 PM in response to Richard T

Hi Richard

If you select the symbol in the bottom of the Character Palette and click the Insert button it should appear in your application like this ♭.

I hope that helps.

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