Some (one?) greek sign(s) missing in LibreOffice

[arminius]

Hallo!

I get crazy: I tried to make a greek “mue” (Physical sign for friction coeff.).
No way. I tried mu, %mu, %micro, etc.
In fact: %alpha works well and provides a correct greek alpha sign.

And then I searched examples: Here I found it: It’s written %mu.
But also in examples I get a “%mu” and NOT the greek sign.

I tried this in LO Impress, but it’s the same in LO Writer. I checked it.

And what is not funny: In the examples this is the only sign which does not work.
Again an obvious bug?

Hermann
Win 7 home 64.

[Lupp]

As you also used German badges you may use a keyboard of German standard layout like I do myself. There the µ (old ASCII extended code 181) is the third assignment to the “M” key got by AltGr+M. You can not get a µ from the ‘Basic Greek’ section of UTF tables this way.

(I placed this attempt of an answer inside a comment because it is off topic for the English branch of ‘ask’.)

[arminius]

Thank you! AltGr+M - the most important thing - works. And this also in math mode. OK-I see: It’s also printed on my IBM-keyboard. But this trick does not work for %nu. I am not familiar with different fontsets.
Nevertheless- I did not understand where the problem is and why it does not work on a simple German WIN7-system. And as I remember mu and nu is also missing on my Linux-Laptop. (Suse 13.2 64). I’ll check it out.

[AlexKemp]

You have excellent answers elsewhere, but I thought to mention the actual Unicode letters. As long as you have a font with the glyphs within them you can use the following to assign that letter to a keyboard-combo of your choice:-

• (menu):Tools→Autocorrect Options...→Replace (press New)

The Unicode chars:

• µ (U+00B5) MICRO SIGN
• μ (U+03BC) GREEK SMALL LETTER MU
• ㎂ (U+3382) SQUARE MU A
• ㎌ (U+338C) SQUARE MU F
• ㎍ (U+338D) SQUARE MU G
• ㎕ (U+3395) SQUARE MU L
• ㎛ (U+339B) SQUARE MU M
• ㎲ (U+33B2) SQUARE MU S
• ㎶ (U+33B6) SQUARE MU V
• ㎼ (U+33BC) SQUARE MU W

How to Type these Chars?

It is OS-specific. I entered the chars above under Debian 6.0 by copying them from KCharSelect v1.6 (a KDE character selection utility).

In Windows you used to obtain any keyboard char by typing Alt + numeric codes (Number-Pad only):

• Alt+xxxx (where xxxx is the numeric code point) (no preceding zero)
  (generates an OEM-encoded character)
• Alt+<+>+xxxx (where xxxx is the hex Unicode)

The above are problematical, and may not work; Alt+letters in particular are used to access menu options, whilst Alt+numbers under Firefox are used to access Tabs. Probably the simplest method under M$ is to use Windows Character Map (charmap.exe) & copy into the clipboard.

If this helps then please tick the answer ()

…and/or show you like it with an uptick (∧)

[JKEngineer]

@alex kemp Would you expand on how to actually access the unicode characters you list? I believe that those with just numeric values can be accessed with Alt+numerical keypad value in Windows. I don’t see how to do the ones you list with letters. I did search help, but no joy.
thanks

[arminius]

Yes- fully correct: E.G. the “B” always tries to access a menu under LO.
In the menu Alex described there is a nu and mu as correct greek signs. They are there in the left column as :mu: and :nu: .

I am completely confused… The clipboard copies bitmaps - or am I wrong?
I only want to write a simple mathematical formula with mu - the friction coefficient.

[AlexKemp]

@arminius: I’ve answered your question; do I get a (), or what? “The clipboard copies bitmaps”: incorrect. The clipboard copies multiple MIME-types. The only one that you can be certain that it copies is ‘text/plain’. In LO you can examine these multiple MIME by pressing Ctrl+Shift+V.

[Lupp]

(Since nobody mentioned it so far:)
No solution for “the computer”, only for AOO, LibO!

There is an add-in/extension named ‘Compose Special Characters’ available via this location from the OpenOffice branch but also working (for me) in every version of LibO I tried (up to 5.0.2). I don’t need/use it on a regular basis, but now and then. Someone specifically interseted in Greek letters may easily memorise and then use the special key combinations . He (f/m) will also need an additional shortcut for actually applying the replacement of the special keys by the addressed symbol. This shortcut is configurable. The special keys are not. This is a good solution judged from a technical point of view. It may not be as “handy” in every context as someone would prefer. Concerning Calc … You will learn about that yourself.

Since the original question focussed on the “micro” sign I didn’t suggest this solution till I found appended the comment by the questioner on my comment on his question.

Hope this helps.

[dajare]

I use this extension MANY times, EVERY day. Great add-on, IMO.

[charlie.it]

Are you using Formula? With Formula it works.

[arminius]

yes- for shure.
I am an old LaTeX man: In LaTeX I would say: $ \mu $ does not work.

Every letter (OK - I did not try each letter) works, but not %mu and %nu. Why?

---

OK-in another thread I ask where this window on the left is.
In one of my Libreoffice Versions it vanished.
I tried reinstallation of the newest LO. No way…

Hermann

[horst]

Since LO5 there are emoji symbols which are entered in Writer and Calc via Autocorrection.

Enter :mu: and you get µ if the used font supports it. Works fine with Segue UI Symbol and Segue UI Emoji (win 8.1) , but if I use Arial I get M.

[Zore34]

It’s wrong on the example. After inserting the symbol with Tools → Catalog, I found out that the correct one is %my, not %mu.

I don’t know if it’s a bug, but I have LibreOffice version 4.2.8.2 and ‘mu’ letter is inserted into formulas as %my