Home Forums Networks & Cross-Platform Networking Why can't I make fractional characters in Mail?

No doubt there is an easy answer, but it sure eludes me.

I use the same font in MS Word as I do in Mail. Word allows fractional characters, but Mail does not, at least I can't figured out how to do it.

I know I can cut & paste a fractional character and that will work, but there must (should) be an easier way.

MS Word has a character substitution function where you can set any given set of characters and when they are entered they will automatically be replaced with another set. It is part of the spelling correction function. There is a similar global function in Snow Leopard that works in many applications including Safari and Mail. I don't recall if it was in Leopard or not. The substitution list is global but the function has to be activated in the preferences for each application where you want to use it.

For detailed instructions on using the "substitution" function in Snow Leopard see this Apple Knowledge Base article or in the OS X help, search for "substitution".

Thanks JoeMike.

I understood how to MS handles fraction characters, but was, alas, hoping that such a feature existed in Mail. If there is, I still have been unable to find it.

OTOH, maybe it will be in 10.8

OTOH why not use the ability that currently exists in OS X 10.6?

You are right that the fractions are not default substitution characters but using System Preferences > Language & Text > Text and Character Viewer it only took several minutes to add all of the available fractions to the substitution list. Now when I type 1 slash 2 in Mail or Safari I get ½. It works flawlessly in those applications such as Mail where you can enable Spell checking and substitution.

If you check the references in my previous post you will find specific instructions on how to enable substitution in each Apple application.

Bravo! Works as advertised. Many thanks!

Be aware that if you attempt to use fractional characters in an email message, your recipient may see those characters replaced with a blank rectangle or a "?" character.

The email standards were invented in a day when only normal ASCII characters were common, and the standard email protocol permits only 'normal' characters (the ones you see on your keyboard) and forbids 'extended' characters, including curly quotes, accented or foreign-language characters, and other special characters.

You can send such characters only if you send email in Rich Text format (which not all email programs allow) or HTML format (which many people don't allow and which limits you to the special characters created by HTML entities). I would hazard a guess that a good many people using email will not receive "smart" fractional characters; hell, even something as simple as curly quotation marks can often cause problems.

Thanks Tacit. Very good info, though I don't like it.

Next, you'll be telling that the Earth is not the center of the universe...

iirc, as soon as you start adding any sort of "style" (bold, italic, change colors, font size, anything like that) it converts to rtf format transparently. So then you get your custom fonts (with things like "1/2" character) just fine, so long as the receiver has the correct font in their system of course. I use that a lot when I want to bold or quote something etc, and I have yet to run into any problems with it.