On 14 aug. 2012, at 11:58:49 -0400, John Culleton wrote

Consider also creating the figured bass (or any musical notation) in the shareware package Mup. The output is a ps file. Then the notation and any accompanying verse can be treated as a graphic import. There are horses for courses. For music I always use MUP.

Thank you for the tip. I had a quick look at it. It looks interesting, and at least superficially a bit like Lilypond, which I gave a try many years ago. But I think I will stay with Finale, which fulfills all my needs in the field of music notation, including, in recent versions, figured bass. My problem was not with music notation but with inserting some of the symbols and characters in a normal text. The stacked BC-figures are under control now. Other special symbols, like that for an augmented fourth, a diminished fifth and the "petite sixte" may become a problem. But I have not seen those in the impressively long list or symbols available in MUP either. Kind regards, Robert Blackstone