Forum

After one of the more recent upgrades, I started having trouble with the Special Characters function, particularly ʾ and ʿ (the small half moon characters used to indicate the letter/sound of aleph and ayin in Semitic languages, according to one of the common transliteration systems). Every time I try to insert either of these characters I get a square box instead. Some of my documents retain the correct characters, but every time it is inserted the square appears. Any ideas on what the problem is and how to fix it? Thanks.

Are you running the beta?
Choose Mellel->About Mellel and see the version.
If so, then it may be a known issue that will be solved with the next build (coming soon). Otherwise, please explain how you type these characters and what font's you're using.

I'm using v3.2.7b2. The font I'm using is Times, and yes it is apparently a problem with that font, rather than say Times New Roman.

It may be a font cache issue. I suggest clearing up the font cache (see here: here:http://www.macworld.com/article/1139383 ... clear.html) and see if that helps.

If you search for those characters in the 'special characters' application in Mac OS and scroll through the various font variations, Times is not in the list (though Times New Roman is). I don't think there's a problem with Mellel or your with Mac OS; it's just that those characters are simply not present in the Times font.

It is true that these characters are not supported with Times and many other fonts but Mellel has a substitution mechanism for such cases. It should render the marks and you should never see squares unless you have no font that supports these characters whatsoever.
I suspect that this is due to some font cache malfunction (very common after upgrading to Mavericks) but it could also be a bug In Mellel so I would like to ask the original poster to update us on the situation.

Ahh, ok. Good to know. Sorry for the misinformation.