Inserting ligatures and other characters in Pagemaker 7.0

[Nate_D...@adobeforums.com]

I'm having difficulty dropping in characters I need into Pagemaker documents. In particular I'd like to use "fi" & "fl" ligatures, as in the font I'm using they actually do make a visible improvement in the appearance of those pairs. I also need to insert the infinity symbol (8 on its side) into the text at several points. How do I do this? When I select a stretch of text from a MS Word document that has such symbols & then paste it into Pagemaker, all the ligatures, &c turn out wrong (replaced with dots or other incorrect symbols).

As it happens Pagemaker 6.5 actually had a little plug-in for searching a text for "fi", "fl", "ffi", "ffl" & replacing them with ligatures. This seems to have been deleted with 7.0. Any idea why?

[Dominic...@adobeforums.com]

Word supports Unicode but PM does not. This is why the ligatures will not convert over. Standard Type 1 fonts do have the fi and fl ligatures in them, but they are not acessible by many Windows apps. To use them in PM, you will have to edit the fonts (moving the ligatures to other slots) or use expert sets (which have the ligatures in accessible slots). I am not aware of the plugin to which you refer. PM for Mac can, however, access the fi and fl ligatures because the Mac OS grants access to those slots.

[sandy_...@adobeforums.com]

Certain fonts (Arial Unicode, Lucida Console, Palatino Linotype, Times New Roman) will produce a larger character set than the typical ANSI255 supported in Pagemaker, but many of the ligatures are not supported. Use Windows' character map (in start>programs>accessories) to get the alt+0000 key codes. If you want true use of ligatures and all open type characters, switch to InDesign. As for your infinity symbol, you may have to set it in a different font (like a math symbol font). If you have Corel Draw, look through their symbol fonts to find one. Otherwise you may have to do an inline graphic.