how do you get special characters in posts
12-21-2013, 08:43 PM
Post: #1
 Don Shepherd Senior Member Posts: 739 Joined: Dec 2013
how do you get special characters in posts
In the old forum, I used links to a special page in the hpmuseum site to get special characters like divide, sigma, and square root. Since this new forum has more formatting options, is there a way to get these special characters without using those special codes now?
12-21-2013, 09:12 PM (This post was last modified: 12-21-2013 09:18 PM by Mark Hardman.)
Post: #2
 Mark Hardman Senior Member Posts: 525 Joined: Dec 2013
RE: how do you get special characters in posts
(12-21-2013 08:43 PM)Don Shepherd Wrote:  In the old forum, I used links to a special page in the hpmuseum site to get special characters like divide, sigma, and square root. Since this new forum has more formatting options, is there a way to get these special characters without using those special codes now?

The new forum supports inserting $${LaTeX}$$ expressions.

Mark Hardman

Ceci n'est pas une signature.
12-21-2013, 09:58 PM
Post: #3
 Don Shepherd Senior Member Posts: 739 Joined: Dec 2013
RE: how do you get special characters in posts
(12-21-2013 09:12 PM)Mark Hardman Wrote:
(12-21-2013 08:43 PM)Don Shepherd Wrote:  In the old forum, I used links to a special page in the hpmuseum site to get special characters like divide, sigma, and square root. Since this new forum has more formatting options, is there a way to get these special characters without using those special codes now?

The new forum supports inserting $${LaTeX}$$ expressions.

Mark Hardman
Thanks Mark. I really don't want to learn a whole new language, I just want to be able to insert a sigma, square root, divide, or multiply symbol. Isn't there a quick and easy way to do that? Latex looks like it is used for complicated math expressions. My needs are much simpler.
12-21-2013, 10:17 PM
Post: #4
 Katie Wasserman Super Moderator Posts: 630 Joined: Dec 2013
RE: how do you get special characters in posts
See my suggestion at the bottom of

You can invoke 'charmap' by holding down the windows key and hitting 'r', then type in charmap.

-katie

12-21-2013, 11:33 PM
Post: #5
 Mark Hardman Senior Member Posts: 525 Joined: Dec 2013
RE: how do you get special characters in posts
(12-21-2013 09:58 PM)Don Shepherd Wrote:  I just want to be able to insert a sigma, square root, divide, or multiply symbol.

Copy and paste from the following Unicode characters:

∑ √ ÷ ×

Mark Hardman

Ceci n'est pas une signature.
12-21-2013, 11:51 PM
Post: #6
 Don Shepherd Senior Member Posts: 739 Joined: Dec 2013
RE: how do you get special characters in posts
(12-21-2013 11:33 PM)Mark Hardman Wrote:
(12-21-2013 09:58 PM)Don Shepherd Wrote:  I just want to be able to insert a sigma, square root, divide, or multiply symbol.

Copy and paste from the following Unicode characters:

∑ √ ÷ ×

Mark Hardman

OK, thanks Mark. I copied those to the clipboard, pasted them in a Notepad document, saved it with Unicode encoding, and was successfully able to copy from that document and paste in the forum post. That's a solution that will work for me.
12-22-2013, 02:52 AM (This post was last modified: 06-18-2014 06:07 PM by Don Shepherd.)
Post: #7
 Don Shepherd Senior Member Posts: 739 Joined: Dec 2013
RE: how do you get special characters in posts
Well, after much email exchange with Katie, here is what I found:

Terminators backslash left paren and backslash right paren do not center text on the line, which is what I want normally. Terminators dollar dollar and dollar dollar center text on the line.

The following codes must be surrounded by backslash ( and backslash )

backslash sum gives a large sigma
backslash Sigma gives a small sigma (capital S is required)
backslash div gives a division symbol
backslash times gives a multiply symbol
backslash sqrt{2B+1} puts 2B+1 under the radical
backslash sqrt{} gives just the radical symbol, nothing underneath it
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