[Solved] Numbers with Hats (Caret, Circumflex)

[aaronkrerowicz]

I'm writing an essay dealing with music theory, and when writing about music musicians often use numbers with hats (I've also heard them called carets and circumflexes) to indicate specific individual scale degrees. While I've been able to find alphabetic characters with this hat (ex: â, ê, ĉ), I've been unable to figure out how to type numbers with the same hat. The closest I can come is putting the hat before or after the number, resulting in two separate characters (^1 or 1^). Is there a way to get this as a single character? Thanks much!

[FJCC]

I think you need a font that supplies these characters. There seems to be one here labeled Scale Degrees.
The characters can also be produced with OpenOffice Math. For example, in a Writer document select the menu Insert -> Object -> Formula and enter the code
hat 1
That will produce a 1 with a circumflex accent but that is a very painful way to get the job done unless you need only a very few examples of the characters.

[MrProgrammer]

I'm writing an essay dealing with music theory, and when writing about music musicians often use numbers with hats. … The closest I can come is putting the hat before or after the number, resulting in two separate characters (^1 or 1^). Is there a way to get this as a single character?

This need is the reason the Combining Diacritical Marks block was created in Unicode. The character you want is U+0302 (Combining Circumflex Accent). Placed after a character, U+0302 displays a ^ above it. The character appears as one on the screen or when printed. The following characters were created in this manner. The first line actually has 20 characters: 0, U+0302, 1, U+0302, 2, U+0302, ….

0̂1̂2̂3̂4̂5̂6̂7̂8̂9̂
ÂB̂ĈD̂ÊF̂ĜĤÎĴK̂L̂M̂N̂ÔP̂Q̂R̂ŜT̂ÛV̂ŴX̂ŶẐ
âb̂ĉd̂êf̂ĝĥîĵk̂l̂m̂n̂ôp̂q̂r̂ŝt̂ûv̂ŵx̂ŷẑ
$̂£̂€̂∞̂⌘̂◊̂®̂©̂½̂π̂

If you will be using the Combining Circumflex Accent often, you'll want to create AutoText entries for 0̂, 1̂, 2̂, 3̂, 4̂, 5̂, 6̂, 7̂, 8̂, and 9̂. I suggest copying the characters from this web page and using Edit → Paste Special → Unformatted Text to put them in a Writer document. Use Edit → AutoText to build ten shortcuts for them. Read about AutoText in Help → Index or in User Guides (PDF) or searching for topics about it in the Writer Forum.

You can type U+0302 directly, however the method will depend on your operating system.

If this solved your problem please go to your first post use the Edit button and add [Solved] to the start of the title. You can select the green checkmark icon at the same time.

[keme]

There are keyboard setups/mapping where diacriticals are on "dead keys". With this kind of setup, nothing happens onscreen when you press the key for the diacritical mark, but it is attached to the next character you type.

What language/keyboard setup do you use?

Edit: Sorry! Of course, that only works when the accented character already exists for the font you are using, and the requested accented numbers do not exist in any font I have found. Take a look at the Scale Degrees font FJCC linked to. The easiest workaround I see in Writer without adding an additional font, is to insert formula objects like "hat 9" anchored as character, but that has its own implications.

[Villeroy]

Ubuntu 18.4 with LO 6 and AOO 4.1
Works with text editor, mail client and terminal.
I enter 5{Ctrl+Shift+U}0302{Space} and get a 5 with circumflex using "Ubuntu Monospace" font.

Fails with Firefox and my office suites:
5̂
These are 2 characters. The second one is x0302