Appleworks 6.2.9 versus Character sign palette

[Nico van Dooren]

Hallo, Using Appleworks for making a text document it is for me not possible to use Character sign palette. " Joint " is not to make active!? I hope you understand me. In " texteditor "app. is Character sign palette ok! Who can and will help me
to use again Character sign palette in Appleworks 6.2.9?

[Barry]

Hallo, Using Appleworks for making a text document it is for me not possible to use Character sign palette. " Joint " is not to make active!? I hope you understand me. In " texteditor "app. is Character sign palette ok! Who can and will help me to use again Character sign palette in Appleworks 6.2.9?

Hello Nico,

AppleWorks is an old application, originally written (as ClarisWorks) for Mac OS 4. It was Carbonised to run in OS X shortly before the public release of OS X 10.0. All of this came long before Macs started using the Unicode character set, and long before the Character Palette and other OS X word Services were introduced. AW has never been updated to handle Unicode.

AppleWorks can makes use of a number of standard symbols using the 'option' modifier key or using the option + Shift modifiers. You can see which symbols are available using Keyboard Viewer, available through System Preferences > International > Input menu.

You'll find a larger number of symbols if you have the old Symbols font installed.

Neither of these methods will give you the large number of special characters in a Unicode encoded font, but Unicode fonts are restricted to Unicode aware applications, such as Text Edit.

Regards,
Barry