Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC

To Thread - Forum Home

The Mudcat Café ^TM
https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=146532
55 messages

Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC

20 Aug 12 - 12:30 PM (#3392713)
Subject: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: Haruo

I posted this in a thread about how to sing in a foreign language, but since it's also useful in many other contexts I thought I'd give it its own Tech thread... may well be duplication of some earlier effort of mine or someone else's, but here it is anyway...

If you're typing on a full-fledged desktop-PC keyboard with a calculator pad on the right side of the keyboard, you can probably get accents for Spanish (and French and German and Italian and Portuguese and Scandihoovian, and even some fancy-pants varieties of English) by holding down the ALT key while typing four-digit numbers on the calculator keypad:

à as in Che serà is ALT+0224
á as in Que será is ALT+0225
â as in mon âme is ALT+0226
ã as in São Paulo is ALT+0227
ä as in Häagen Dazs is ALT+0228
å as in smörgåsbord is ALT+0229
æ as in Encyclopædia is ALT+0230
ç as in façade is ALT+0231
è as in ma mère is ALT+0232
é as in alabaré is ALT+0233
ê as in moi-même is ALT+0234
ë as in the Brontë sisters is ALT+0235
ì as in lunedì, martedì... is ALT+0236
í as in para mí is ALT+0237
î as in maître d' is ALT+0238
ï as in Thaïs is ALT+0239
ð as in Loftleiðir Icelandic airlines is ALT+0240
ñ as in pequeño is ALT+0241
ò as in che può amare is ALT+0242
ó as in mi amor, mi corazón is ALT+0243
ô as in À toi la gloire, ô Ressuscité! is ALT+0244
õ as in õigekeelsussõnaraamat (standard dictionaries in Estonian!) is ALT+0245
ö as in bei mir bist du schön is ALT+0246
ø as in øl is ALT+0248
ù as in Più bella cosa is ALT+0249
ú as in hijo único is ALT+0250
û as in jeûne (as opposed to jeune) is ALT+0251
ü as in Deutschland über alles is ALT+0252
ý as in býr, mýl (in Sindarin) is ALT+0253
þ as in þe Olde Curiosity Shoppe is ALT+0254
ÿ as in L'Haÿ-les-Roses is ALT+0255
ß as in muß i' denn is ALT+0223

Note: many laptops, notebooks, etc, do not support this approach (this is my single biggest gripe about my own laptop, which was configured without my advice by a nephew who didn't know about this stuff). And Apple products use different systems to get odd letters.

Note: The above system, if it works on your keyboard>screen, can also be used to get a variety of other characters you may find handy at times, such as

—, an em-dash, is ALT+0151 (150 is en-dash)
¡ as in ¡Hola! is ALT+0161
¿ as in ¿Donde? is ALT+0191
½, one-half, is ALT+0189
©, Copyright, is ALT+0169
®, Registered Trademark, is ALT+0174
™, simple trademark, is ALT+0153
£, pound ("sterling") sign, is ALT+0163
¥, yen sign, is ALT+0165
«, left-pointing pointy quotes, is ALT+0171
», right-pointing pointy quotes, is ALT+0187
¢, cent sign, is ALT+0162
¶, "Pilcrow" i.e. paragraph, is ALT+0182
†, cross, is ALT+0134
‡, double-cross, is ALT+0135
…, ellipsis, is ALT+0133

etc.; you can also get capitalized diacriticized letters from À ALT+0192 to Þ ALT+0222 in more or less the same order as the lower-case ones.

Merry typing!

{{later}}

And for some unknown reason, ALT+0140 and ALT+0156 are Œ and œ. Never have figured out why they aren't in the alphabetized section of the list, nor why ÷ (ALT+0247) is in the alphabetized part…

PS I apologize for the thread drift, but when the topic has to do with foreign-language texts, as highlighted by Allan C's comment «"Ta" is a contraction of "esta'" (I can't figure out how to put accent marks over the appropriate letter)», this information may be very helpful and pertinent...

Haruo

20 Aug 12 - 12:34 PM (#3392718)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: Charmion

You can also choose an International keyboard layout using the Control Panel menu. I recommend the Canadian Multilingual keyboard for modern European languages.

20 Aug 12 - 12:41 PM (#3392724)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: Haruo

Yes, and if you have a particular language in mind, one of the choices at TypeIt.org may be useful; it works well for Esperanto, and though I haven't used it I have high hopes for the Full IPA. And for Korean and Japanese I've recently begun using branah.com and Lexilogos virtual keyboards.

Haruo

20 Aug 12 - 01:35 PM (#3392758)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: Haruo

거룩거룩거룩전능하신주여 … ゐゐ cおmめんt おんぢt！

Those were my first attempts at typing Korean and Japanese using the above-referenced keyboards. Just copy-pasting them here to see if they come through in Mudcat's sometimes odd encoding treatment.

The Korean is (or is intended to be) the first line of "Holy! holy! holy! Lord God Almighty!" in that language, whereas the Japanese is a garbled transliteration of "Oui oui comment on dit!" (originally I typed "ゐゐ comme on dit" but then I went back and added the "nt" just to see how it was handled...

20 Aug 12 - 02:29 PM (#3392785)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: Artful Codger

Before I abandoned the Windows world, I configured a few of my own keyboard layouts, so I could more easily type in the characters I wanted in the various languages I use. The standard keyboard layouts for some of these languages would have required too much relearning. Microsoft has a keyboard layout utility available for free download.

As for the oe ligatures, I don't think they're included in the Windows basic codepage or the Latin-1 charset. That may explain why Windows doesn't handle them more nicely.

As for the Mudcat "odd encoding treatment", read this thread:
Entering special characters

20 Aug 12 - 02:43 PM (#3392793)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: Leadfingers

ALL useful info for future reference ! Thanks all .
Now all I need is to learn to type AND spell ! LOL .

20 Aug 12 - 02:50 PM (#3392800)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: Q (Frank Staplin)

Very simple using HTML Characters on computer if you have Windows.

Using Haruo's character numbers, change the beginning ALT+ to &#, and follow the number with;

thus small a grave, (224), &#à
Caps a grave (192), À

A list, including other characters such as © at several sites on the net. (I used one from Rice University,, no longer available).

20 Aug 12 - 02:59 PM (#3392803)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: Q (Frank Staplin)

Here is a site with the characters:
http://www.chem.uky.edu/research/grossman/specialchars.html

Use the numbers as I have indicated; &# preceding the number, and follow with ;

((I made a mistake in my previous post, I must have entered &# twice for the lower case à)

20 Aug 12 - 03:07 PM (#3392807)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: Haruo

Thanks, Artful Codger, that's a good thread for this sort of stuff. Glad to see the numeric table for Esperanto letters...

20 Aug 12 - 03:22 PM (#3392814)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: Q (Frank Staplin)

Some characters not commonly listed. yoked oe is 156.
œ
Euro currency 8364
€

Greek letters:
913= Α
945= α lower case
and so on
(think I got these courtesy comicodger)

20 Aug 12 - 03:23 PM (#3392816)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: Haruo

With ALT I can get a Euro symbol with 0128; not sure if it works with ampersand, will see: €...

20 Aug 12 - 03:24 PM (#3392817)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: Haruo

...and it did...

20 Aug 12 - 04:10 PM (#3392835)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: Q (Frank Staplin)

More than one way to catch a cat?

224

That froze my keyboard in that line until I typed another line.

20 Aug 12 - 04:15 PM (#3392844)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: GUEST,Charles Macfarlane

On Windows machines ...

Start, Run, charmap, OK

... launches an applet that generates many/all possible characters that you can then copy'n'paste into your text.

I use it so often I've put a link in my Quick Launch bar.

20 Aug 12 - 04:32 PM (#3392858)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: Haruo

One interesting thing (to me anyway) is that I originally typed this up with the foreign-language examples in italics (using <i> and </i>) with similarly encoded "big" tags on the whole list and "small" tags around parenthetical comments like "(standard dictionaries in Estonian!)" and at first they worked, but now it's all deitalicized and flattened. Sad in a way.

20 Aug 12 - 04:34 PM (#3392859)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: JohnInKansas

The "authority" for characters is the Unicode Consrtium where you can find charts of all the characters that the standards organization knows about and has defined numeric codes for.

As a standard practice, the Unicode people give the character code numbers in hexadecimal. Most characters are defined by a "four digit" hex number, although some require "double byte" "8-digit hex."

Every hex number of course has a "decimal equivalent" and in Windows, the "Alt-Numpad" method works for "low numbers." With NumLock turned on, holding down the Alt key while you type the decimal character number on the NumPad should insert the character glyph for that decimal number. This method originated when ASCII characters were the only ones you could type, so it's sometimes called "ASCII Coding."

(Note that this method can be rather "clumsy" on laptops that don't have a discrete NumPad.)

Earlier Windows version could only use decimal numbers up to 255 with this method, but recent versions generally work with some decimal numbers up to 4-digits.

Since decimal 9999, the largest decimal character number generally usable with the Alt-Numpad method, is only 270F in hex notation (✏ which may or may not show in your browser), that leaves awholebunchofcharacters the method won't work for. For common uses, lots of those don't work anyway, but it's usually safest to use the hex numbers if you're in the least unsure of whether you'll get what you expect, and always preview and proof check anytime you do anything dangerous.

In Word, you can type the hexadecimal character number and with the cursor immediately to the right of the last digit, Alt-X should transform the character to the glyph for that hex number.

In Word, Alt-X is a "toggle" so you can put the cursor next to a character that you've pasted from someplace else, and Alt-X will show the hex number for the character. This is sometimes useful even if the character shows as an "unknown" (usually a blank square) in the source you copied it from, and may still tell you what the character was meant to be.

A character that has been inserted in Word, using the Alt-X method, generally can be copied and pasted elsewhere and nearly always will show as the correct glyph in the place where you paste it.

In all cases, the correct character glyph can only be displayed on your computer if your computer has "any font" that contains the glyph you want. Even this may not be sufficient in html, since sometimes rendering the correct glyphs requires using a "correct" encoding in your browser. There is no single encoding that "always works," mainly because lots of html-coded source materials don't stick to the standards, but generally UTF-8 is a good one to try if you're seeing a lot of "unks."

"International" keyboards exist for typing most languages (Microsoft lists and displays something like 130 or so at one of their websites) but about the only way to get one for a language is to buy it in a country where the language is fairly common.

There is a "correct" numeric code for the € symbol, for people who have a keyboard that has a key for it. For US keyboards, and others that lack the key, Microsoft redirects the Alt-0128, since decimal 128 was "undefined" and not used in ASCII codes. It's essentially a "standard shortcut."

A remaining difficulty is with languages that are written right-to-left and/or top-to-bottom. The ability to type in proper order is incorporated in some Windows systems, but requires download (and in some cases purchase) of additional software that's not included in common Western European systems. Only some Windws OS versions have been capable of adding the accessories required, although it's becoming a little easier (or so I've heard?).

For html postings, you can use the decimal character number preceded by an ampersand (&) and "pound" (#), and followed by a semicolon (;).

You can also use the (preferred) hex character number preceded by and ampersand-pound-x (&#x) and followed by a semicolon (;).

The are also a number of characters in common use that have html "familiar names," so, for example, you can use:

© to get ©

™ to get ™

and quite a few others.

John

20 Aug 12 - 04:35 PM (#3392862)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: Haruo

I use charmap if I need to, say, type a single Hebrew letter like ש in the midst of an otherwise anglo document, but I find it way too cumbersome to type connected text in, particularly since it won't (easily, anyhow) let me insert spaces between words...)

20 Aug 12 - 04:41 PM (#3392866)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: GUEST,Charles Macfarlane

HTML character 'entities' - the rather non-obvious official description of them - such as & for &, are explained here ...

HTML Entities

20 Aug 12 - 04:44 PM (#3392872)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: GUEST,Stan

Using the Alt plus number trick I found I can do perfect Guitar tab in s simple text editor like note pad. Not the spaced out gappy stuff you get on line but proper looking tab.

I tried posting with it here but it doesn't work. The font needs to be set to Courier New and I don't seem to be able to do that here.

E╓─────────────────┬─────────────────┬─────────────────┬─────────────────┐
B╟─────0───────────┼─0─────0─────────┼─────────────────┼─────────────────┤
G╟───────────0─────┼───0───────0─────┼─────────────────┼─────────────────┤
D╟─────0───────0───┼─────0───────0───┼─────────────────┼─────────────────┤
A╟─────────────────┼─────────────────┼─────────────────┼─────────────────┤
E╙─3───────3───────┴─3───────3───────┴─────────────────┴─────────────────┘

. .1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + . 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + . 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + . 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + .

It looks like this. All the spacing goes wrong. Pity.

20 Aug 12 - 04:48 PM (#3392874)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: Haruo

Yes, if Mudcat used (or at least permitted) "full HTML" there are a lot of things we could do nicely that it doesn't permit. But I'll admit what seems most bothersome to me is when something works fine when it's fresh (like my italics this morning) but then a few hours or days later when I come back it's lost all its beauty...

20 Aug 12 - 04:50 PM (#3392877)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: Haruo

And lest anybody thinks otherwise, let me assert absolutely that I am NOT complaining about Max, or even about the Mudcat; I'm just wishing for a perfect world where everything worked the way I would design it if I were God... I love this place and all its creatures great and small!

20 Aug 12 - 04:51 PM (#3392879)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: treewind

None of Haruo's examples in the first post showed up correctly on my screen.

Mudcat doesn't specify which character set it uses (ideally it should specify UTF-8 but the line that declares that has been commented out because in practice there's too much legacy text already posted in Latin-1 and declaring UTF-8 would break all of that)

Interestingly, Haruo's pieces of Korean and Japanese look correct (I can't read either language but the symbols look like they are probably right)

My browser is set for utf-8 by default.

20 Aug 12 - 05:13 PM (#3392889)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: GUEST,Charles Macfarlane

> From: Haruo
>
> Yes, if Mudcat used (or at least permitted) "full HTML" there are a lot of things we could do nicely that it doesn't permit.

The trouble with webpages using fancy fonts is that they rely on fonts that may only be on the developer's PC! I spent some time one evening devising how to make guitar chord diagrams look right on a web-page without needing embedded images. The result looked fine on my PC, but noone else could read them - I hadn't realised that the font I'd used had been installed onto my PC by one or other of the pieces of music software I was trialling at the time.

Still trying to avoid images, I eventually went for this sort of thing:
Simple chord charts using tables

20 Aug 12 - 05:16 PM (#3392891)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: GUEST

For what it's worth I just copied my tab from Mudcat and pasted into Notepad and it came out correctly spaced.

I then copied the Korean and Japanese symbols into the same document and all I got was a series of small squares, a c an m and two ts.

I remember having to save notepad files as Unicode rather than ANSI encoding. Maybe it's something to do with this.

20 Aug 12 - 07:50 PM (#3392976)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: Ole Juul

I hope that in this day and age, as treewind points out, that everybody is using UTF-8!

Regarding using Alt-number, I do that in MS-DOS6.22, but since I don't otherwise run any Microsoft or proprietary products, I use a "compose key" which in my case is set to Right Alt. I mostly just use it for the vowel ligatures in Danish.

As Charles Macfarlane points out, the fonts are on the user's computer (thank goodness!) and the only reliable way is using CSS. Even then (just to muddy the waters a bit) the W3C specifies that browsers need to have user CSS available. In fact, I adjust my Firefox to only use a serif font, regardless of any web page's specification. I find I can read stuff better that way. Regardless, Charles' web page linked above, does show properly.

20 Aug 12 - 08:00 PM (#3392982)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: Artful Codger

To get monospaced text in Mudcat messages (aligned as in plain-text files), you can embed your text in CODE tags:

<code>
Put your text here (but don't use tabs if
you want the spacing aligned properly).
</code>

Which should appear as:


  Put your text here (but don't use tabs if
  you want the spacing aligned properly).

20 Aug 12 - 08:13 PM (#3392990)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: GUEST

Like this?


  E╓─────────────────┬─────────────────┬─────────────────┬─────────────────┐
  B╟─────0───────────┼─0─────0─────────┼─────────────────┼─────────────────┤
  G╟───────────0─────┼───0───────0─────┼─────────────────┼─────────────────┤
  D╟─────0───────0───┼─────0───────0───┼─────────────────┼─────────────────┤
  A╟─────────────────┼─────────────────┼─────────────────┼─────────────────┤
  E╙─3───────3───────┴─3───────3───────┴─────────────────┴─────────────────┘
  
  . .1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + . 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + . 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + . 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + .
  
  
  Excellent. Thanks.

20 Aug 12 - 08:14 PM (#3392991)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: GUEST,Stan

Any chance of sorting the vertical spacing?

20 Aug 12 - 10:47 PM (#3393037)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: JohnInKansas

Some mention has been made of "music fonts" that install with a scoring program. Some of these may use the Unicode characters, but the number of music symbols defined in Unicode is actually very sparse. Most such fonts use the code numbers that usually apply to other characters, with a "character map" that prints a non-standard "picture" instead of a normal alphabetical one. Mixing these "re-mapped" glyphs in with normally coded fonts can produce uncertain and unexpected results.

The use of the Windows Character Map for picking a few special characters is also mentioned. In recent versions of Windows the Char Map allows you to look at whether a font you'd like to use contains the character groups you need, so that it can be a help in picking the most appropriate font to apply in normal use "on your computer" where you can select a font. For use in html the browser in use by the one reading the page, or the CSS that the designer applied, may override what you code to be used, so "unusual" fonts should probably be avoided.

Since they are of interest here, the principal "music symbols" included in Unicode are in "Miscellaneous Symbols" along with Astrological and Zodiacal Symbols, at hex numbers between 2638 and 2672. The musical ones are:

♩ = ♩
with alternate/related 𝅘𝅥 = 𝅘𝅥

♪ = ♪
with alternate/related 𝅘𝅥𝅮 = 𝅘𝅥𝅮

♫ = ♫
alternate/related 🬶 = 🬶

♬ - ♬

♭ = ♭

♮ = ♮

♯ = ♯
not to be confused with the number sign # = #

Note that most of these, especially the "alternate/related" ones, may not display on the mudcat page for most people, but I'll leave the codes in for reference.

There are a few others, mostly "repeats" of the ones above at different numbers, scattered in the other "miscellania" but none that I've figured out how to make use of directly for music notation.

An interesting? character taken at random: ⅋ = ⅋

John

21 Aug 12 - 12:26 AM (#3393055)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: Ole Juul

An interesting? character taken at random: ⅋

Upsidand?

21 Aug 12 - 05:20 AM (#3393101)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: Nigel Parsons

Now if only they would consider Welsh as a standard language, we could get all the vowels with accents. We currently lack a circumplex accent (hat)on the 'w' and the 'y'.

21 Aug 12 - 08:39 AM (#3393162)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: JohnInKansas

Ŵ = Ŵ

ŵ = ŵ

Ŷ = Ŷ

ŷ = ŷ

These are in the Adobe Times New Roman font I have on my machine, but Windows probably uses a default TrueType Times New Roman so it may be different. Windows since Vista does have a font that contains them in the default installation, so a font substitution should be automatic.

ok?

John

21 Aug 12 - 09:00 AM (#3393167)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: JohnInKansas

It might be noted that the simplest way in Word to "shortcut" non-keyboard characters that you use often enough to justify it is to think up a "misspelling" and put it in "Autocorrect."

You might enter something like "Replace ^W with Ŵ" etc., and when you type ^W you'll get Ŵ (if you have "autocorrect as you type" turned on).

You can also do it by creating explicit "keyboard shortcuts," but the autocorrect method is quicker to set up, and in the event that you might want to write ^W an immediate Ctl-Z, before typing anything more, will cancel the autocorrection and leave it as what you typed.

I haven't looked at the "free Wordish" programs enough to know whether they include autocorrection, but would expect them to.

John

21 Aug 12 - 03:34 PM (#3393282)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: GUEST,Tony

Here's an image file showing all those Alt-keypad characters and the numbers that generate them.

21 Aug 12 - 06:30 PM (#3393360)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: GUEST,Grishka

See also the thread about CopyUnicode, a little tool that you can download from Jon Freeman's domain. No numbers need to be typed, just click and paste.

21 Aug 12 - 06:47 PM (#3393364)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: Artful Codger

In the Entering special characters thread, I provided specific Unicode code tables for several Roman-based but badly-supported languages--so far, these include Esperanto, Irish, Gaelic, Welsh, Czech, Slovak and Polish. As someone (John?) mentioned, using Alt-X with those codes should convert them into the appropriate letter in Word, though I think the Alt-X codes may differ from Unicode in the lowest (< xFF) values. (Please correct me if I'm wrong on this.) Sadly, you'll have to look elsewhere for Unicode tables for the common special characters, since I only gave the HTML named "escapes" (character references) in mine.

Warning: Alt-X is a "greedy" algorithm, so if the preceding letter to the one you want happens to be in the range of A-F or a-f, or is a digit, you may have to pad your number with leading zeros (so you end up with four digits) to prevent the preceding character from being included in the code that Alt-X converts. You could also use a leading space, but then you'd have to back up to delete it. Typical Microsoft "design". Furthermore, Alt-X doesn't work with all Windows apps, only with Word and its kin.

21 Aug 12 - 07:09 PM (#3393377)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: Q (Frank Staplin)

The macron (bar above a vowel) is a diacritic that is used to indicate vowel length and stress in Hawaiian and other Polynesian languages.
I asked in this forum about adding a macron, and never got a method my luddite brain could comprehend, but one day I found the characters in Wiki.
Ā using &# plus number 256;
ā 257
Ē 274
ē 275
Ī 298
ī 299
Ō 332
é 333
Ū 362
ū 363

Wiki has characters for macron use with other languages in the same entry. MACRON

21 Aug 12 - 07:11 PM (#3393378)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: Q (Frank Staplin)

Oops! ō

21 Aug 12 - 07:12 PM (#3393379)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: JohnInKansas

In Windows, the "chart" is in the Character Map utility. Click on the character you want and the bottom line should show you the character number. The number shown may be the decimal number you'd use with the Alt-NumPad method, but if you select to show "Unicode character set" (in recent versions) it will be the hexadecimal number for the character as defined by the Unicode standard. Type the hex number and immediately hit Alt-x and you get the character in Word.

The correct decimal numbers for the first 124 characters are the same as shown in any ASCII chart. The character set was extended to include the ANSI set with 255 characters, and the ANSI set has been in use so long you'd probably have trouble finding one that doesn't go to 255 (even if it's still called an ASCII chart).

One exception is that the "euro" sign was added at #128 in Windows font pages for those who don't have a keyboard that has a key for it, but when you type Alt-0128 the character printed is actually the true hex 20AC (decimal 8364, which you may or may not be able to enter "correctly" using Alt-Numpad, depending on your OS version). Various other systems may have made other substitutions, but the number you type doesn't have to be the number you get. The lowest 255 chars should be pretty much consistent with the ANSI/ASCII definitions - usually. Recent Windows versions seem to allow some characters with decimal numbers above 255 to by entered with Alt-Numpad, but it doesn't appear that all the four-digit ones work as expected in all cases.

Since about 30 of the ASCII/ANSI "characters" are non-printing "control characters" like backspace, linefeed, carriage return, the Alt-Numpad method can only "officially" type far fewer than 255 characters, and there's no need for Alt-NumPad for the ones on your keyboard, so subtract about 100 from 255 to get what can be called "specials" that can be entered that way.

The single-byte Unicode standards define about 3,800 characters that you can theoretically enter using other methods, although many of them require adding fonts specific to the languages that use them.

The two "Unicode fonts" included in Windows contain about 2,000 characters that can (in Word) be typed using the hex number and Alt-X, although there's still the problem that someone who reads your html has to have one of those "extended fonts" installed to see what you wrote. Microsoft recommends that you should NOT install the "Unicode fonts" unless you really really really need them since they're "large" and can eat up your RAM.

FOR HARUO (first post): my own laptop, which was configured without my advice by a nephew who didn't know about this stuff.

On laptops that don't have a separate NumPad, there should be an "embedded" numpad overlaid on the letter keys. If you can figure out which one of the fancy "alt function" keys turns the NumPad on/off, you should be able to:

1.) Turn on NumPad
2.) Type your Alt-NumPad number to insert the character
3.) Try to remember to turn the NumPad back off before you resume normal typing. (hate it when you forget!!!!)

This is not to say that your kid didn't mess something up (our kids can be clever?). (Microsoft makes it pretty easy to swap what function keys do, although I've never found much use for that.) The method is so clumsy to use that I just decided to ignore it and use the Alt-X method in Word instead, when I'm forced onto a laptop.

John

21 Aug 12 - 10:26 PM (#3393423)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: Bill D

http://www.fileformat.info/index.htm has a lot of information on this... including this interesting utility (It works for me using XP)

22 Aug 12 - 07:04 AM (#3393526)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: GUEST,Charles Macfarlane

> From: Artful Codger
>
> Warning: Alt-X is a "greedy" algorithm

This is rubbish.

In Word 2000 I just typed ...

<Alt48>0 and I correctly got 00, as I expected

... and ...

0<Alt48> and again I got 00, again as I expected

> Furthermore, Alt-X doesn't work with all Windows apps, only with Word and its kin.

Again, this is rubbish. AFAIAA, it works in all situations where the resulting character would be acceptable to the software. It may be that some software ignores or rejects the result, because it can't handle the character set or because the input would not be valid (for example text where a number is expected), but AIUI the mechanism basically functions everywhere in Windows.

Your understanding of the mechanism is clearly flawed. The substitution is legacy behaviour from DOS and works at a very low level. Go into Word or a console prompt and try the following ...

Press and hold down <Alt>, type 48, release <Alt>, type 0. You will observe that the first zero appears as the <Alt> key is released! This shows it's nothing to do with the high-level software interpreting the succession of characters coming in from the keyboard queue, that would give us a single character corresponding to 480, it's being done by the low-level keyboard driver monitoring the state of the <Alt> key.

22 Aug 12 - 11:26 AM (#3393624)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: Artful Codger

Ahem, read carefully. Holding down Alt while typing on the numpad is a different input method from Alt-X. With the Alt-numpad method, you hold down the Alt key while typing in your numbers IN DECIMAL (and according to a mapping that varies from Unicode for a significant number of characters), then release after the last digit, so the span of digits is well defined. With the Alt-X method, you type in HEXADECIMAL digits (0-9,A-F/a-f) first, THEN type Alt-X, and it takes the digits you just typed and converts them. Typing 30(Alt-X) should give you a zero character, but if you typed in, say, ediface(Alt-X), Windows has four possible look-behind choices: e, ce, ace, face. It should choose the last (the longest string of uninterrupted hex digits), producing edi followed by some wonky character.

Problem is, suppose you wanted "glacé". If you typed in glace, then the hex digits for é with no leading zeros, then typed Alt-X, you'd get something like gl (or gla) followed by some strange character (not the accented e) because a and c are also hexadecimal digits, and the look-behind span isn't delimited. However, I think the maximum number of hex characters that the Alt-X method will consider is four, so padding with leading zeros should remove any ambiguities (if you don't mind the extra typing). This method wasn't well thought out--and it only works with Word and some other Microsoft programs, not with every application (as Alt-numpad should).

So it's your understanding that's flawed, and next time watch the tone in which you "correct" someone, leaving you hauteur out of it.

22 Aug 12 - 12:03 PM (#3393633)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: GUEST,Tony

Perhaps even the alt-keypad method isn't universal in Windows apps. I'm not an expert on this, but I know of one example where it doesn't seem to hold true, at least for the 4-digit alt-keypad characters:

In an old (2008±) version of Bricscad (version 9), I can paste in the plus-or-minus character from Atlantis word processor (or from this message form), and I can create the character by using Bricscad's own code %%p or the Unicode \U+00B1, but I can't create that character by pressing alt-0177. In fact, it appears that I can't use alt-keypad to create any of the 4-digit alt-keypad characters in Bricscad, though I can paste them all in and create some of them by other means.

I can create at least some of the 1- 2- and 3-digit alt-keypad characters, for example the degree character (º) alt-167, a dot (•) alt-7, and the 1/2 character (½) alt-171.

22 Aug 12 - 12:21 PM (#3393645)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: GUEST,Charles Macfarlane

Well, I'm sorry, but ...

1) The Alt-X functionality you describe has never been present by default in any version of Word that I've used. I've used many, probably most, versions of Word from somewhere around v2 or 3 for DOS up to 2000, which latter I've just checked on this PC, nothing happens.

2) "Alt-X" on its own is a little ambiguous, so never having heard of or encountered any other <Alt> key functionality other than the one that has been the predominant subject of discussion in this thread, in particular not the functionality you claim, I naturally presumed you were talking about the <Alt> key functionality that everyone else here was discussing.

However, that aside, perhaps there is some configuration setting in Word that turns it on, which you forgot to mention? Having said that, I've checked in Word2000, and can't find anything that appears relevant.

22 Aug 12 - 12:35 PM (#3393654)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: GUEST

> From: GUEST,Tony
>
> Perhaps even the alt-keypad method isn't universal in Windows apps.

I can't comment on that particular software, but perhaps it's using an 8-bit charset that only supports codes from 0 to 255, that is 256 = 2^8 possible characters, rather than 16-bit unicode which supports from 0 to 65535, 65536 = 2^16 possible characters.

Interestingly, if you type <Alt177> you get a different character from that which you get if you type <Alt0177>, presumably because the charsets are not identical in the area of overlap.

22 Aug 12 - 12:39 PM (#3393655)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: GUEST,Charles Macfarlane

Above was me, sorry, forgot to sign it.

22 Aug 12 - 01:54 PM (#3393678)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: GUEST,Tony

Yes, there's a whole separate set of non-4-digit alt-keypad characters. Codes 1 to 31 work without leading zeros but not with them, codes 32 to 126 produce the same character whether entered with or without the leading zeros (but they're on the keyboard, so who needs them?), and 127 and up produce different characters if preceded by a zero than if not.

Bricscad can produce Unicode characters, with that \U+hexcode trick. And it can display any character that was created in another app by alt-4-digit coding. I can create a theta (Ɵ) in Atlantis by pressing alt-0415 (though, interestingly, here in the message form it creates a Y-umlaut Ÿ, which would be created by alt-0376 in Atlantis), and then paste either of those characters into Bricscad successfully.

06 Apr 17 - 09:16 AM (#3849048)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: Jack Campin

This keeps coming back thanks to spammers, but anyway...

How do I get the extra characters used in Turkish and Hungarian when using an iPhone? İ, ı, Ğ, ğ, Ő, ő, Ű, ű and a few others.

The usual accented-character trick of holding down the iPhone on-screen keyboard widget for the base letter and selecting from a small menu doesn't work - the little menu doesn't have those characters.

This is just for typing occasional words (musical terms, names) when the surrounding text is in English - I don't want to turn the whole interface into a foreign language.

06 Apr 17 - 09:45 AM (#3849053)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: Mrrzy

MUCH easier than the alt system is the one where, remember on typewriters, if you typed the accent the carriage didn't advance till you'd typed the letter under it? The *only* think this can't do is the long umlaut in Hungarian/Turkish, Jack Campin, how did you do what I see above?

Ctrl and , = cedilla, then you type the c
Ctrl and `= accent grave on whatever you type next
Ctrl and ' = accent aigu "
Ctrl and ^ (Shift and 6) = circumflex accent "
Ctrl and ~ (Shift and `) = tilde "

Most of these just get ignored if you type a letter Word doesn't think you should put that accent on. I think it's the * and the / to do the circle and slash for Nordic languages, but I've not needed them.

06 Apr 17 - 09:47 AM (#3849054)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: Mrrzy

Right, the above is for Word.

06 Apr 17 - 10:10 AM (#3849059)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: DaveRo

Jack Campin wrote: How do I get the extra characters used in Turkish and Hungarian when using an iPhone?

My wife has a Greek keyboard on her iStuff. I just tried it. It's a tap on the little globe to the left of the spacebar - or a long-tap and a second tap to select Greek - to change the keyboard and another tab or two to return to English. So add a Turkish keyboard. I don't know how you do that but I can guess.

Same on Android which I use.

07 Apr 17 - 01:23 PM (#3849311)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: Jack Campin

Jack Campin, how did you do what I see above?

Typed in the HTML codes directly. If I'd wanted an Azerbaijani lower-case upside-down e (ə) I could have typed in ə

Unfortunately I have an iPhone 4 with a version of iOS (the latest that will work, I think) which doesn't have the globe icon.

08 Apr 17 - 02:25 AM (#3849385)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: Mr Red

Mr Red's Hash Code generator

it displays codes and with will appear on your screen below each. Euro accents are quite low in number. Just scan (+10 eg) until the character you want, and remember/copy-paste the code. If you use it regularly remember the code. There are shortcuts to various number groups.

Fiddly and suited to PCs more. But I use it when needed. Even for emoticons.

08 Apr 17 - 02:33 AM (#3849386)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: DaveRo

Jack Campin wrote: I have an iPhone 4 with a version of iOS (the latest that will work, I think) which doesn't have the globe icon.

Wife's iPhone is a 4, iOS 7.1.2.

Perhaps the globe only appears when you have 2 keyboards.

08 Apr 17 - 03:48 PM (#3849510)
Subject: RE: Tech: Typing foreign stuff & symbols on a PC
From: Jack Campin

Thanks. The globe icon was there all along, and I had set it up to switch to Turkish already - I'd forgotten it was there because it never gives me any grief. (Whereas if I try to use my wife's iPhone 6, I am likely to make a finger slip and then have to cycle through a couple of dozen scripts including some I don't even recognize before ending up back in English).