English pound sign in dollar dominated text

[rex]

Hi,

I never really got this question resolved although it was posted in this forum in 2001. Here it is again.

In a text field, when old records are being entered into an archival database, the records (in Australia, that is) previous to decimal conversion, (and that is over 100 years worth of records in our case) need to be entered as they originally were written. This is, in pounds shillings and pence. It is the pound sign (an L with two lines through it) that is needed. Just that , and nothing more, no calculations are involved with it, purely a text entry. Looks easy, and it must be, but the answer escapes me on our modernistic decimal keyboards.

Rex

[stanley]

Rex:

Surely, this is just a font issue? Certain fonts have the symbol for Pounds Sterling - on my Mac, I usually pull it from Lucida Grande or Helvetica - but many fonts have replaced it with the now more ubiquitous Euro symbol.

-Stanley

[Vaughan]

I can see the problem: a single number field that for some records displays "L" pounds, but "$" for others.

[stanley]

The post was regarding a text field, and if that is correct, then it really is just a matter of having the right font installed. If it is a number field, that would cause a whole other problem, not only because you're using a different currency indicator, but because of the format of pounds shillings & pence, which has a mathematical sign in it: 2, 2/6 for example.

-Stanley

[rex]

Hi, Thanks for the replies. It is a plain text field that does not involve any calculation.. purely a text matter. There are around ten input angels who may enter data into this database (and others) The 'change fonts' is not enabled for the password they use because, as a matter of maintaining a consistant ongoing database, the fonts changes are locked out. As the pound sign is a regular inclusion I thought maybe if there was a field comprising just a box with the pound sign in it on the layout they could copy and paste, but perhaps some macro or keystroke I don't know about would be easier for them.

Extracts of this database and others, all originally composed in Filemaker. can be seen on www.library.org.au

[stanley]

Rex:

You could possibly put a button on your layout which would insert the Pound Sterling symbol in your text box - in fact, you could even have it check to see if "$" is there, and to replace it with the pound sign in that case. It would all depend on exactly what you wanted. So, in this case, you'd essentially be creating your own macro...

-Stanley