Mac has decided to make life better for us all (Not) by changing the way fonts work on a Mac. These changes make it more difficult to access characters that live in the Option and Option-shift layers of the keyboard (sort of like Windows does), speciffically option-p and option-z.
All our fonts use these key positions and we have noticed that the new Photoshop CS substitutes characters, for instance in Altemus games, typing Option-p now gives you a Pi symbol from the Symbol font and not a flying bowling pin that you might have been trying to set!
I hate it when they change the rules, if you do too, maybe you want to send a complaint to Apple.
You can also type special characters and symbols by pressing combinations of keys on your keyboard using a work around.
To see what keys to press, you must first open System Preferences/International, select the Input Menu pane, in the list put a check beside "Keyboard Viewer", "U.S. Extended" (conveniently located at the bottom of the list) and "Character palette" to turn them on. Then at the bottom left of the pane, put a check next to "Show input menu in the menu bar", then close Preferences. Now in the top menu bar of the desktop on the right side you will have an icon and drop-down menu, in a US system it is an American flag.
Select "Show Keyboard Viewer" in the new drop-down menu. A panel with a representation of the keyboard (sort of like keycaps) will pop up, it is resizable. Select the desired font in the drop-down menu there. Press the Shift, Option, or Option and Shift keys simultaneously to see the characters that are available. To type a character, press the modifier key (or keys) and the key on your keyboard that's in the same location as the character you want to type in the Keyboard Viewer.
The Character Palette has an interesting way of browsing the characters in a font, just choose "Glyph" from the pull-down menu to see our fonts and then select a font in the "Font" menu then browse. Double clicking on a character here will insert it into things like TextEdit and Flash, Freehand but unfortunately not in Photoshop CS.
For Photoshop CS go back to the American Flag icon and select "U.S. Extended" from the list (it might be grayed out if you do not have Photoshop selected), now you can type the missing characters, easy. If you had already type a character and have a Symbol character such as Pi you will have to reselect the correct font from the font menu.
M A C K E Y B O A R D L A Y O U T
Most of the fonts in the Altemus Collection, especially fonts like Bursts, Spirals and Pinwheels, are based on a square type slug and are designed to be set with zero tracking and with solid leading. As a result, you should be able to intermix characters from any of the individual fonts in the collection. The longer, complex sets are generally arranged on the keyboard in a logical progression, such as A, B, C.
There are other groupings of similar or companion characters along the row of numerals at the top of the keyboard. Often you will find bolder or lighter variations of a design in the same key position, but with either the Option, Shift or Option and Shift keys enabled.
F I N D I N G C H A R A C T E R S
There is a printable PDF Showing that downloads with each font that contains all the information you need to get the most out of each font you purchase. On the full showing page, below each character design there is a code that refers to that design's particular keyboard position, and indicates which modifier keys are needed to access it.
For some fonts you will also find sample settings with identifying key stroke information under each character design. In those instances, "O"= Option, "S"= Shift, "OS"= Option Shift. Lowercase or Unmodified characters are displayed as lowercase letters, such as "a" throughout. An uppercase or capital “A” is idicated by "SA".
On a Mac, to access the character designs, hold down the indicated modifier key or keys and type the keyboard position indicated for each of the character designs.