~Symbols in SL text~

Otherwise known as alt characters or something, for whatever reason my pc will not display the character symbols such as hearts, stars, or others. All I see in their place are *'s I can view these on my laptop that runs Vista but not on my pc with XP. Does anyone know how I can fix this? I'm hoping it is a setting I can change. Also on the character lists I have seen online, I have seen some pretty generic symbols, yet I cannot find the nice big stars or hearts I have seen in some group titles for instance. Anyone have a better list that what I have been able to find? Thanks!

Sounds as though, somehow, you don't have the fonts installed. I can't remember which are the ones for those symbols, but on a Windows computer they're usually called Webdings (one font) and Wingdings (three fonts). They're usually pre-installed by default on all Windows systems. You could try the Microsoft site, to see if there's a replacement font download available.

I checked my fonts folder in settings and all 4 you mentioned are listed

You can find the codes to use most of those symbols here:

http://www.tedmontgomery.com/tutorial/ALTchrc.html

try this

http://www.pcdon.com/page3.html

also alt keys only work with the keypad and not the numbers across the top of the keyboard.

Install a unicode font to fix this

lslwiki.net points here http://superb-east.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/vietunicode/Aruniupd.exe
but I never tried it, and can't even tell if the download works

Personally I fixed it by installing arialuni.ttf

Are there more of these? I saw the SL hand symbol character in someone's group title once.

Here is a link showing how to create them via alt and a number - I did not see any that look like a hand though:

http://www.mistywindow.com/reference/ascii-alt-codes.htm

I downloaded whatever this was and all I could see it downloaded was a notepad list of words, wasn't what I needed so I have no clue what that was.

Anyone have any more ideas?

Bear in mind only some of these symbols will display correctly on a mac, otherwise SL shrinks it down until it looks like a little blurred " - This has been imported to Jira and a fix will be upcoming any decade now.

The search string Day Oh provided gives two similar looking links in the results list: one is a link to a folder of fonts, and one is a text file of the folder's contents, similar to what one got in the days of DOS by doing "DIR > DIR.TXT" , which might be the useless kind that ZsuZsanna picked.

The first one in the list works for me - you just click on the font name to start the download.

http://www.buddhismtoday.com/software/ is the folder the first link in the search results goes to.

http://www.buddhismtoday.com/software/ARIALUNI.TTF is the download url of the arial unicode font.

Copy and paste the last url I gave and put it in the address bar of your browser.

If that doesn't work I'll email it to you if you want.

if you do a search for "index of" and that file name you'll probably be able to find that file.

You could install the East Asian language pack, if you are running XP and have you XP CD's or got a good pre-installed version of XP it won't be any problem. Instructions are on my blog in the Hipihi page or at altoxeno.com. I think that will install some Asian language unicode fonts that will work for the symbols.

Extended characters. Only Windows hides them awkwardly under counterintuitive alt+number combinations; other platforms usually have some method to access them directly via the Compose key (usually bound to Menu if using a Windows keyboard; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compose_key).



See if this applies: It's possible that extended chars are only working for Vista right now.

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-11348

Oh ZsuZsanna, are you on a Mac?

That makes a big difference.

Pfft.

Suz, no he said he was on windows. I was just making it noteworthy for any mac users pondering on a similar problem that might be browsing the thread.

Hah, I deleted the message you replied to, now the fabric of the space time continuum will come unraveled.

Quick, get some nail polish! A lot!

Hey y'all ,
Recently I was enlightened to the alt characters with my Vista PC but my husband couldn't see them... In order to see them and you're on XP you'll need to do this...

**MAKE SURE YOU HAVE YOUR XP CD**
Start
Control Panel
Date , Time , and Regional Options
Install Language
And check the Add Eastern Asian Language (this is where you need the CD for it to install it)
Then you'll need to reboot and wah-lah now you can see them!!

23Mb for a font?!?
That's bigger than the 1.22 viewer itself.. jeez

The easiest way to make symbol messages is to go into Word if you have it. Create your message there and cut and paste it into SL.

Getting it to display should work in SL if it displays in Word.

http:/www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/index.htm

I found this site to be rather useful. It shows you what it should like and then it shows how your computer displays it. You can search for a specific symbol like 'heavy heart exclamation mark ornament' and if you can see it in the browser test page you just need to copy paste it into SL. I like to stick them in my SL profile's notes tab. That site also tells you what fonts support a particular symbol so you can get the right font. Another good one is 'heavy black heart'.

ugh.. they're like the Myspacification of SL.

Im am also having trouble with the symbols. I cant figure out how to type them in SL. I can see them when other people write them in chat, and my computer has them loaded. I am on a laptop that runs XP, if that counts for anything. If someone could just explain to me how this is done I would be very happy and thankful. Thanx

A easy way is to copy and paste into a note card ones you see that you like you can then copy and paste from there any time like to make your own gester spam or to add to a title or what ever.

I have a note card of tons that someone gave me as I could not get the alt-#pad to do it in world.. can do it in word though..©☻♥♦6♣6♠•◘○◙☼♀►◄‼ž¨ª§
♪♫♪♫ ® ███ ░ the alt works here though odd

Secondlife is using its own fonts which can be found in the fonts subdirectory of the secondlife installation directory. C:\Program Files\SecondLife\fonts by default on my english windows xp system, called MtBkLfRg.ttf and MtBdLfRg.ttf.

If you install tehm into your window font directory (like any other font) you can use the fonts in any Application (like Word). Using this fonts in Word also alows you to use the Inser Symbol function of Word to get all the special symbols which are supported in SL.

This way you can create everything in Word and use copy/paste to get it in any SL Text area like notecards, gestures etc.

Have fun
Wol,
SL Guided Tours

ok thank you so very much. I have been looking forever on that answer! Thanks again!

This is truly annoying... every OS Second Life runs on has it's own perfectly capable font handler; why are the viewer developers going out of their way to do it wrong?