Symbols in email, downloads

[Nancy Allison <maker -at- verizon -dot- net>]

Hi, everyone. I no longer have questions about how to create special characters and get them to show in my PDF and .chm files. On my computer, here in my office, I get the desired results.

My new question is this: How can I be sure that my audience will see the characters correctly?

Technical details: My source document, created with Framemaker 7.1 onÂXP with SP3 containsÂa mu, Omega, and degree symbol.

The mu and the degree are ALT-#### symbols created with the regular character set (like in Arial or Times Roman), so I'm assuming they're stable.

The Omega was created by applying the Symbol font to the capital W. Frame 7.1 doesn't handle Unicode symbols.

I have now created a PDF (I included all fonts) and a .chm (using Mif2go, if it matters) that correctly display the symbols on my monitor. 

What happens once these files are downloaded from the web site, or emailed from one person to another? Can I assume that the symbols will still appear correctly? Are they now hard-coded into the files? Or, will some users see capital Ws or capital Os where the Omega should be, or blanks where the degrees should be?

Is there any way to assure that these symbols will now appear correctly on others' systems? If I have to include a note explaining what fonts, browser, operating system, etc., etc., my readers need, I'll do it. Would that be enough to assure that the symbols will appear correctly?

My technical people are insisting that we use the symbols, and not spell out the word "Omega" or use "u" for mu, or "deg." for degree. So, I have to get this right. All help gratefully received.

--Nancy
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