Wingdings circled numbers: Cannot be pasted? Not in PDF?

When I paste Wingdings circled numbers (black on white) into a Xara Pro 8 text box with font Wingdings, then only number 1 is displayed correctly. For the other numbers, I get a symbol of a writing hand. Why is that?

OK, I can work around that problem by pasting in Rich Text Format. And that I did. But there is another issue: The numbers that finally show up in the Xara document are missing from the exported PDF document. Here again, for every number except 1, I get a symbol of a writing hand.

How do I make circled Wingding numbers appear in exported PDF files?

Each of the circled numbers is actually a letter (or glyph). To get them to show up in Xara and the pdf, you have to actually enter the "letter" corresponding to the desired circled number and apply the typeface. Unfortunately, this sequence of circled numbers doesn't have corresponding letters in Wingdings, and Xara doesn't know what to do with these glyphs.

If you want to use Wingdings particularly, you can paste the numbers into Word first, then copy them from Word and paste them into your Xara document. (You will need to make sure that the font is associated with each character. When you paste the glyph into Word. it may assign the previous typeface.) Alternatively, you can use a typeface in which the circled numbers are associated with letters. I normally use Monotype Sorts for this. Either way, the circled numbers should show up in the pdf.

Wingdings has always been problematic going into a PDF since the font shipped in Windows. If I recall properly, there was a version that embeds fine floating around the Internet at one point in time. About the only truly consistent means of including them ina PDF is to convert them to curves.

Take care, Mike
(PS @ amoore...you can use charmap.exe to copy them to the clipboard and paste into Xara products. As well, some font managers can also copy glyphs to the clipboard.)

Oh, btw, it's been a while since I have actually used Wingdings. Try using ZapfDingbats if you have it.

Top line is Wingdings, bottom is ZapfDingbats. Screen shot is from the resultant PDF.

Mike

Thanks, Mike, for the suggestions! I figured out that simply using Wingdings 2 solves the problem. Also, then circled numbers are easier to insert.

Black on white: i, j, k, ... = 0, 1, 2, ...
White on black: t, u, v, ... = 0, 1, 2, ...