Greek characters?

[Me163]

When I use greek characters in my profile, to AIM users they show up as question marks. When I view other peoples' profiles that contain Greek characters, they appear as their english equivalents (ie Omega=W). This has something to do with the Unicode-ASCII difference I'm assuming... If it matters, I'm using the "Symbol" font which everyone seems to have. Is there a workaround for this ?

[prometheas]

Symbol is actually just an ASCII characterset whose glyphs happen to look like Greek letters. Think of it like those dingbat fonts... when you type A you get a hammer (or whatever)... if you change the font, you'll see that it's actually capital A, and not in fact a hammer.

Same with your omega. It never was an omega, but always a W... may as well have been a hammer.

What you need to do is:

1. System Preferences > International
2. Select the Input Menu tab
3. Check the "Show input menu in menu bar" on
4. From the scrollable list, make sure that "Keyboard Viewer" is checked on, too (should be the third entry).
5. Scroll down that list until you get to the "Greek" entry (it's about half-way down on that list)...
6. Check it "on"
7. Depending on how old the people are to whom you're talking, you might find "Polytonic Greek" useful as well... ;-)

Now you've got what you need. Quit System Preferences, and head back to Adium. Open a conversation window with your fellow Hellene and select "Greek" from the input menu (will be a flag in the right side of your menu bar).

This will change your keyboard layout to the Greek one... be warned that this layout is VERY DIFFERENT from the QWERTY keyboard you know and love... if you need guidance with what letters are mapped to which keys, select "Show Keyboard Viewer" from the input menu.

[Me163]

When I do this, I get the same result as I would have by using the character palette to input the characters: I can see the characters just fine, but to AIM users they look like question marks. My buddies say they are simply using the "Symbol" font but when I use Symbol, I get regular Latin characters. Unless I use AIM, in which case I do in fact get Greek characters!! When I view their profiles in Adium, I see regular Latin characters. It is only when I use AIM that I can see their greek characters. Sorry for the long explaination and thanks for the help !!

[prometheas]

Well, I'll tell you what: it definitely works Adium to Adium, as well as Adium to iChat. Haven't tested the official clients yet, but I can assure you that the Greek text has no trouble passing over the networks.

Your likeliest problem is a font problem. In this case, more specifically, that your buddies have a font set for their chats which is not a Unicode font... in fact, it sounds like they've all possibly set their font to be Symbol. Symbol is not a unicode font, sadly. If they're on windows, they should use Arial. If they're using Macs, they should be using Helvetica or Lucida Grande.

Again, I have yet to test with the official AIM client, but I'm rather sure of the nature of your problem being font-related.

I'll follow up tomorrow, once the 9-5ers I know that use official AIM are online. ;-)

[prometheas]

I managed to test sending Greek Unicode test with various other clients, over AIM, MSN, and Yahoo! networks, using the Input Menu, and can report complete success!

I'd say you should get those folks off using Symbol... then again, it's not exactly so easy to input Greek text on Windows, unless you've got the localization installed on your computer... and I'm not sure that's very easily accomplished at all, state-side.

Anyhow, them's the facts; helpful or damning.