OpenType Fractions

Dean Allen talks about fractions. In a recipe, why talk about

1/2 cup

when you can easily write

½ cup?

(That's ½ in HTML) Understanding and taking advantage of OpenType fonts and all their new capabilities to make things look better and clearer is one of many ways most of us fail to let our computers do what they can for us. Did you know that the built-in Programmer's Calculator (look at the View menu!) has a button for Unicode, that lets you see the unicode character for any number -- hex or decimal? Neither did I.

What I still don't understand is how you use the Mac OS X Characters palette to find the Unicode value for a specific glyph. Email me.

Update: It's easy. Open the character palette, select the character, and hover. The tooltip gives you the Unicode character code. Thanks to Stephen Hoffman, the first to get it!