Mac software
Use complex characters and symbols Resolving riddles and restrictions with what you want to run on your Mac
QIn Pages documents, how can I use characters not in the Character Viewer, such as the maths symbol for average, which is an x with a bar on top?
AThere are two ways to create compound characters, depending on how you deliver them: in text or set in a laid-out format such as a PDF. Unicode, used in all text on Macs and Apple devices, handles these using Combining Diacritic Marks, including accents and scientific symbols, such as the overbar for denoting average. Although hard to add through the keyboard, you can do this using the Character Viewer window from the Keyboard menu bar item.
First type ‘x’, then open Character Viewer. In the list at the left select Unicode, and scroll the centre list until to select Unicode block 00000300 just below the top, containing Combining Diacritic Marks. Find the COMBINING MACRON or OVERLINE, and double-click to insert it after the ‘x’: Pages and most other apps combine the two for you. You can copy and paste this between documents and it should retain its formatting when displayed in a font with full Unicode support.
The other method uses typographic controls to ‘kern’ a macron or overline back onto the ‘x’. Type the separate characters and select them. In the Format / Text sidebar, select the wheel tool below the size for Advanced Options. Reduce the Character Spacing to bring the accent back onto the top of the ‘x’. This looks great in a PDF, but the underlying text contains two separate characters.