Languages and Special Characters

In this tutorial, we’ll learn how to find and use special characters and glyphs in CorelDRAW, as well as characters from other languages.

Click on any of the images below to view full-size.

Glyphs Docker

In this example document, the line at the top is artistic text, in Futura Md font.

To change the 50% to ½, you could, of course, edit the text and enter the fraction manually.

But it would look nicer to use a fraction symbol here.

Futura is an Open Type font, and you can check whether any Open Type alternatives are offered during editing. While still in edit mode, select the three characters that make up the fraction, and you’ll see a small arrow. The fraction symbol is available in this menu.

Another way to do this is to open the Glyphs docker, either via the Window > Dockers menu, or choose Text > Glyphs. You can find and insert glyphs of any font, including the ½ in Futura Md.

You can drag glyphs and symbols directly from the docker into your text object.

If you’re using an English keyboard, it’s easy to insert the dollar symbol.  But say you want to use a different currency symbol, and the symbols list is rather long to comb through. You can filter the list to show only currency. At the bottom of the docker, you can increase the preview size, if you need to see more detail.

With any symbol selected, click the arrow at the bottom to see its name, ID, Unicode, and keystroke.

Rather than drag a symbol into the artistic text, you can also click Copy at the bottom of the docker, then edit the text and paste it in.

If you double-click a glyph while a text object is open for editing, the glyph will be inserted where the cursor is. If no text is selected, the glyph will be inserted as an individual text object, in the center of the document.

Glyphs that were just used are now listed under Recent Glyphs. You can bring glyphs into the document from here, or you can right-click to remove one or all from this list.

You can also filter the list to show more than one category at a time, such as mathematical symbols, numbers, and symbols.

Stylistic Sets

Some Open Type fonts have more than one option for some characters. Look for what’s available in the American Captain font and change the list to show glyphs for the entire font. Any character or symbol that has an arrow below it has alternates from other stylistic sets.

If Show all Glyphs is enabled, you can see the entire list with all alternates. For this font, there are several alternatives for all letters.

If the paragraph text is in this font, you can edit the text and highlight a letter such as R. Clicking the arrow will show all alternatives.

This will also work if you highlight an entire word – all alternatives for the entire word will be shown.

Languages

Many fonts support multiple languages. Let’s say you want to add text in Hebrew. Activate the Text tool, click to start the text, and open the fonts list in the Property Bar. Then click the Filter icon, and under Character Range check Hebrew. This shorter list of fonts includes those that support Hebrew characters.

Lucida Sans Unicode is on this list, so display that font in the Glyphs window. Scrolling down, you can see characters and symbols from many languages, including Hebrew. You can also filter this list to include only Hebrew characters.

Now you can drag in characters one by one, placing each in the same text object next to the previous character.

Note that you can’t enter text in a language with the keyboard unless that language is installed in Windows. One way you can do this is via Windows Settings, opening Time and Language, choosing Language, and clicking Add a language. There is also an option to make this your default language.

To switch language, click the ENG icon in the taskbar and choose Hebrew.

Now when using the Text tool, you’ll be typing in Hebrew.

If you prefer to use keystrokes instead of keyboard letters, go back to the Glyphs docker and look at the details for a character to find the keystroke.

Finally, if you have the relevant font installed, you’ll also have the option to write text vertically. As an example, install Chinese Simplified font, or Chinese Traditional. This font supports these characters, and you can choose Vertical text.