AARoads Forum

Am I the only who memorizes the alt codes?

ñ is alt+164
Ã' is alt+165
á is alt+160
Á is alt+0193
é is alt+130
É is alt+144
í is alt+161
Í is alt+0205
ó is alt+162
Ã" is alt+0211
ú is alt+163
Ú is alt+0218
ü is alt+129
Ü is alt+0220

ß is alt+225
Þ is alt+0222 / makes a good emoticon hat (o:Þ or tongue :-Þ
Ø is alt+0216 / makes a good null symbol
... is alt+0133
– is alt+0151
— is alt+0150
½ is alt+0189
¼ is alt+0188
¾ is alt+0190
° is alt+248
§ is alt+987654321123456789 / I'm sure there's a shorter one but I can never remember it

And the list goes on!

Quote from: kphoger on May 02, 2013, 11:43:22 AM
§ is alt+987654321123456789 / I'm sure there's a shorter one but I can never remember it

alt+789 :bigass:

The cent sign (¢) is Alt-0162. I use it fairly frequently, but that symbol seems to have been largely forgotten since it was omitted from computer keyboards. I've even seen toll rate signs in Florida that use the ugly form "Pay Toll $.50" (without the zero before the decimal point). Never understood why those signs can't say "50¢." Maybe they figure people have forgotten what it means.

I also use the euro sign (€, Alt-0128) and the pound sign (£, Alt-0163) relatively frequently. The two I use the most often are the em dash and en dash previously noted by kphoger, though.

A few more:

Alt + 0153..... ™... trademark symbol
Alt + 0169.... ©.... copyright symbol
Alt + 0174..... ®....registered ­ trademark symbol
Alt + 0176 ...°......degree symbol
Alt + 0177 ...±....plus-or ­-minus sign
Alt + 0182 ...¶.....paragr­aph mark
Alt + 0190 ...¾....fractio­n, three-fourths
Alt + 0215 ....×.....multi­plication sign
Alt + 0162...¢....the ­ cent sign
Alt + 0161.....¡..... ­.upside down exclamation point
Alt + 0191.....¿..... ­upside down question mark
Alt + 1.......☺....smiley face
Alt + 2 ......☻.....black smiley face
Alt + 15.....☼.....sun
Alt + 12......♀.....female sign
Alt + 11.....♂......m­ale sign
Alt + 6.......♠.....spade
Alt + 5.......♣...... ­Club
Alt + 3.......♥...... ­Heart
Alt + 4.......♦...... ­Diamond
Alt + 13......♪.....e­ighth note
Alt + 14......♫...... ­beamed eighth note
Alt + 8721.... ∑.... N-ary summation (auto sum)
Alt + 251.....√.....square root check mark
Alt + 8236.....∞..... ­infinity
Alt + 24.......↑..... ­up arrow
Alt + 25......↓...... ­down arrow
Alt + 26.....→.....r­ight arrow
Alt + 27......←.....l­eft arrow
Alt + 18.....↕......u­p/down arrow
Alt + 29......↔...lef­t right arrow

Alt+8675309=Jenny

the symbol for pi can be printed, but you have to type Alt+3.1415...... all the way to the end, so it may take you a while.

Quote from: agentsteel53 on May 02, 2013, 02:36:24 PM
the symbol for pi can be printed, but you have to type Alt+3.1415...... all the way to the end, so it may take you a while.

I think that means it CAN'T be printed.  (Or it will never be printed)

I can type the euro symbol without typing Alt+0128 :D (AltGr+E gives me €).

Quote from: djsinco on May 02, 2013, 02:14:38 PM
A few more:

By the way,

¡ (upside-down exclamation) is alt+173 (shorter than yours)
¿ (upside-down question) is alt+168 (also shorter)
Of course, once your fingers have memorized one, it's hard to learn a different one.

And, regarding √, I am very disappointed that there's no alt code for a true check mark.

Continuing in math,
÷ is alt+246
≈ is alt+247
² is alt+253

And, agentsteel53, π is alt+227.

No, I had not memorized the latter four.

I was just curious if people typed foreign language characters using alt-codes by memory, the way I do.  If the programs I use have hot keys for them, I have no clue.  I just use the alt code no matter what program I'm using.  One of the programs I use at work, though, rejects the "˜ and ' characters.  It lets me input them, but rejects my entire line of text once I hit Enter.

Quote from: kphoger on May 02, 2013, 07:48:18 PM
And, agentsteel53, π is alt+227.

Well, I wouldn't have understood what that symbol was out of context... Is there possibly one with the curve detail from the original greek letter?

Quote from: Molandfreak on May 02, 2013, 08:33:40 PM

Quote from: kphoger on May 02, 2013, 07:48:18 PM
And, agentsteel53, π is alt+227.

Well, I wouldn't have understood what that symbol was out of context... Is there possibly one with the curve detail from the original greek letter?

Yeah, it's called another font.  But they seem to have taken away that option on here.

Quote from: kphoger on May 02, 2013, 08:44:30 PM

Quote from: Molandfreak on May 02, 2013, 08:33:40 PM

Quote from: kphoger on May 02, 2013, 07:48:18 PM
And, agentsteel53, π is alt+227.

Well, I wouldn't have understood what that symbol was out of context... Is there possibly one with the curve detail from the original greek letter?

Yeah, it's called another font.  But they seem to have taken away that option on here.

Quote from: kphoger on May 02, 2013, 11:43:22 AM
Am I the only who memorizes the alt codes?

I keep an .rtf file with all sorts of odd characters in it. I just copy/paste out of that whenever I need something.

Also, I have a laptop and it does not have a numeric keypad - so I cannot type special characters by the alt code method.


Incidentally, I despise laptops with numeric keypads because the manufacturers always insist on centering the touchpad on the regular keyboard portion, which puts it off center relative to the whole body. I have OCD and this drives me batty. Also, I like having home, page up, page down, and end stacked at the right edge of the keyboard rather than having them clustered up top.

Yeah, I'm picky about how I like my keyboard laid out. :P

Quote from: Mr_Northside on May 02, 2013, 03:01:46 PM

Quote from: agentsteel53 on May 02, 2013, 02:36:24 PM
the symbol for pi can be printed, but you have to type Alt+3.1415...... all the way to the end, so it may take you a while.

I think that means it CAN'T be printed.  (Or it will never be printed)

(https://www.aaroads.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fd22zlbw5ff7yk5.cloudfront.net%2Fimages%2Fcm-46534-05101b89c11691.jpeg&hash=f701e8a80486ec47a0e10d0cfc7664907c7bbe46)

and I never memorize ALT codes.  in fact, if I ever need a special character, I usually google something like "capital U with umlaut" and copy/paste what I need.

Quote from: agentsteel53 on May 02, 2013, 09:58:26 PM

and I never memorize ALT codes.  in fact, if I ever need a special character, I usually google something like "capital U with umlaut" and copy/paste what I need.

I just go to Character Map and pick the character from there.

I use two keyboard layouts (Legacy Canadian French and Canadian Multilingual), the combination of which covers pretty much everything I need in terms of Latin-script languages (pretty much all the Western European ones), plus some extra math and typographical stuff. For everything else, there's the Character Map in Windows.

The only Alt code I use frequently is Alt+0160 - Non-breaking space.

If you used a PC in 1986, you had to (sort-of) memorize the Alt codes. I think the only ones I found much use for were 128, 129, 130, and 164. The last few pages in my DOS handbook had all the control characters, so I'd look them up if I needed it (Alt+7 was a "beep", I think).

now no one has an excuse for not using an ñ or Ã' when talking about Peña Blvd in Denver

Quote from: CNGL-Leudimin on May 02, 2013, 03:28:27 PM
I can type the euro symbol without typing Alt+0128 :D (AltGr+E gives me €).

The last time I saw a keyboard with "AltGr" was in the British Airways "Terraces" lounge on my last connection through Heathrow a few years ago (not coincidentally, the first time I saw a keyboard with "AltGr" was in the Concorde Room at Heathrow in 2003). I had a horrible time typing on that thing, just a few too many differences from a US-spec keyboard for me to type comfortably.


The whole Alt-codes discussion is semi-related to the use of autocorrection options in various programs such as MS Word. Sure, you can program a keystroke combination for some of these things. I have "]s" set to produce the section symbol § (Alt-0167) and "]p" set to produce the paragraph symbol ¶ (Alt-0182) because I use those frequently. I chose "]s" and "]p" simply because the firm where I used to work had those combinations programmed into everyone's autocorrect lists and so I got used to using them. Most people have seen how Word converts two hyphens into a dash, although unfortunately a lot of people erroneously use the en dash when the em dash is required because they put spaces around the dash, Word then converts it to an en dash, and people assume that's correct even though it's not. But the thing about the autocorrection is that it doesn't work in all software (what you program in Word doesn't work in Firefox, for example), so I wind up just knowing what the Alt combinations are for a lot of characters anyway.

I tend to use MS Word's autocorrect a lot for legal citation purposes. Legal citations are full of annoying and unnecessary periods (example: a case starting on page 1234 of volume 978 of the Federal Reporter, Second Series, is cited as "978 F.2d 1234"; in addition, legal citations use the old-fashioned abbreviations for states, so you wind up with "N.Y." or "N.J." and so on) and it's a pain in the arse to type them, so I wind up creating autocorrect entries for most of them (to use the "F.2d" example, I set it so typing "f2d" automatically expands into "F.2d"; similarly, for the South Eastern Reporter, "se2d" expands into "S.E.2d," and for court references like the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, "edva" becomes "E.D. Va."). I've learned over time that it's an underused tool because I've been amazed to find out how many colleagues I've known who never even thought of setting up autocorrect in this manner. Surely I'm not the only person who finds it damn annoying to get "U>S>" Back in the days of WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS, I reassigned some of the keys so that Shift-Period and Shift-Comma would give me a period or a comma, respectively, just like on a typewriter. But that's less convenient to do with Windows.

Quote from: Mr_Northside on May 02, 2013, 03:01:46 PM

Quote from: agentsteel53 on May 02, 2013, 02:36:24 PM
the symbol for pi can be printed, but you have to type Alt+3.1415...... all the way to the end, so it may take you a while.

I think that means it CAN'T be printed.  (Or it will never be printed)

I actually wonder, for how many substrings of "3.141592..." does Alt plus the substring yield a pi symbol.

first, it helps to note that, on my computer anyway, typing in "Alt+3.14" gives the browser a 'back' command.  as in, before one even releases Alt - upon the "4", the browser goes back a page.

but I remember in the late 80s, playing around with Alt codes and discovering that, effectively, they are modulo 256.  so Alt+288 was the same as Alt+32 (a space).  so, in some contexts, it should be possible to type "Alt+3.141592..." and, upon release of Alt, yield a character.

it also appears that the period is somehow meaningful.  Alt+1.55 yields a "7", not the cent sign of Alt+155.

mathematically, an infinite number of prefix substrings of pi are the correct value, modulo 256 (whatever the correct value is, given that the "." appears to impart some meaning).  however, in reality there is a buffer which stores the keystrokes entered while Alt was held down.  there are two ways to implement this buffer.

1) make it finite length.  ignore all characters past, say, the 8th, so Alt+123456789 is the same as Alt+12345678.  or maybe it's the 80th.  in any case, when Alt is released, take the resulting string and make an integer 0-255 out of it using standard arithmetic.

2) make the buffer constantly running.  always store the current running value modulo 256, even as the user types in an infinite number of characters.  this is mathematically doable with just a tiny bit more overhead than is needed to store a value 0-255.  I can write out the algorithm if someone absolutely insists.

if the buffer is implemented as method 1, then there is likely not an Alt code which is a prefix of the decimal representation of pi that yields the pi character.  it would be quite the coincidence if it were.

if the buffer is implemented in method 2, then yes, we can eventually get a pi character by typing in Alt+the correct substring of pi.  in fact, there are an infinite number of substrings for which this is possible.  it is left as an exercise to the reader to determine how many digits the smallest substring is.

Quote from: agentsteel53 on May 03, 2013, 12:39:45 PM

Quote from: Mr_Northside on May 02, 2013, 03:01:46 PM

Quote from: agentsteel53 on May 02, 2013, 02:36:24 PM
the symbol for pi can be printed, but you have to type Alt+3.1415...... all the way to the end, so it may take you a while.

I think that means it CAN'T be printed.  (Or it will never be printed)

I actually wonder, for how many substrings of "3.141592..." does Alt plus the substring yield a pi symbol.

first, it helps to note that, on my computer anyway, typing in "Alt+3.14" gives the browser a 'back' command.  as in, before one even releases Alt - upon the "4", the browser goes back a page.

but I remember in the late 80s, playing around with Alt codes and discovering that, effectively, they are modulo 256.  so Alt+288 was the same as Alt+32 (a space).  so, in some contexts, it should be possible to type "Alt+3.141592..." and, upon release of Alt, yield a character.

it also appears that the period is somehow meaningful.  Alt+1.55 yields a "7", not the cent sign of Alt+155.

mathematically, an infinite number of prefix substrings of pi are the correct value, modulo 256 (whatever the correct value is, given that the "." appears to impart some meaning).  however, in reality there is a buffer which stores the keystrokes entered while Alt was held down.  there are two ways to implement this buffer.

1) make it finite length.  ignore all characters past, say, the 8th, so Alt+123456789 is the same as Alt+12345678.  or maybe it's the 80th.  in any case, when Alt is released, take the resulting string and make an integer 0-255 out of it using standard arithmetic.

2) make the buffer constantly running.  always store the current running value modulo 256, even as the user types in an infinite number of characters.  this is mathematically doable with just a tiny bit more overhead than is needed to store a value 0-255.  I can write out the algorithm if someone absolutely insists.

if the buffer is implemented as method 1, then there is likely not an Alt code which is a prefix of the decimal representation of pi that yields the pi character.  it would be quite the coincidence if it were.

if the buffer is implemented in method 2, then yes, we can eventually get a pi character by typing in Alt+the correct substring of pi.  in fact, there are an infinite number of substrings for which this is possible.  it is left as an exercise to the reader to determine how many digits the smallest substring is.

...finishes typing above, returns to action figure collection and browsing comic books... :spin:

Quote from: djsinco on May 03, 2013, 02:56:03 PM
...finishes typing above, returns to action figure collection and browsing comic books... :spin:

astonishingly, no.  I've never gotten into either of those habits.  but I have been known to mutter "this sign has Prismo beading instead of Scotchlite, why must it do that".

Thanks for being one of the first on this board I have found to be less thin-skinned. Good to see someone who can take a punch with aplomb!

(I despise those who are too serious.)

Quote from: agentsteel53 on May 03, 2013, 12:39:45 PM
it also appears that the period is somehow meaningful.  Alt+1.55 yields a "7", not the cent sign of Alt+155.

Trivial work gives result that the "." resets the number. So Alt+1.55 = Alt+55.

Quote from: agentsteel53 on May 02, 2013, 09:58:26 PM
and I never memorize ALT codes.  in fact, if I ever need a special character, I usually google something like "capital U with umlaut" and copy/paste what I need.

That is certainly a lot more keystrokes than alt+0220.  Let me play this out.....

Using only my keyboard (which I prefer), I would need to do the following commands:

Ctrl+n to open a new window (2 strokes)
Alt+Home to go to Google (2 strokes)
capital u with umlaut then Enter to search (22 strokes)
Tab then Enter to go to the first page (2 strokes)
Ctrl+l to go to the taskbar (2 strokes)
Right arrow then Shift+Left arrow to copy the Ü out of the URL (3 strokes)
Ctrl+c to copy (2 strokes)
Alt+F4 to close the window (2 strokes)
Ctrl+v to paste (2 strokes)

.....for a total of 39 keystrokes (if I counted correctly), compared to only four by using the alt code, assuming the first hit on Google was the Wikipedia page.  Of course, if I can't remember the alt code, I may end up using 39 strokes to get it by trial and error (I can usually find the capital U "section" of the alt codes fairly quickly), but I type Spanish so frequently, I find it much more convenient to memorize the common characters.

Quote from: formulanone on May 03, 2013, 09:48:33 AM
If you used a PC in 1986, you had to (sort-of) memorize the Alt codes. I think the only ones I found much use for were 128, 129, 130, and 164. The last few pages in my DOS handbook had all the control characters, so I'd look them up if I needed it (Alt+7 was a "beep", I think).

Back in the day, I also had the color codes memorized for changing the color of the DOS text (if y'all don't know what I'm talking about, run cmd.exe and type "color 17" to get some old-school WordPerfect colors).

Quote from: agentsteel53 on May 03, 2013, 12:39:45 PM
but I remember in the late 80s, playing around with Alt codes and discovering that, effectively, they are modulo 256.  so Alt+288 was the same as Alt+32 (a space).  so, in some contexts, it should be possible to type "Alt+3.141592..." and, upon release of Alt, yield a character.

This is definitely not still the case. I remember having experimented with it several years back that the codes were four digits and continuous all the way from 0 to 9999. Many of those numbers revealed unrecognized characters (at least to the Arial Unicode MS font in Wordpad on my particular computer), but there was definitely stuff at higher numbers that's not there at lower numbers.

What's recognized definitely varies - I have since making my character dump file changed computers twice and on my current computer many of the previously recognized characters have turned to question marks in boxes.
I have also by other means discovered characters that I didn't find trying every code from 0 to 9999, so there are also characters out there that cannot be typed by this method.


The complete unicode library of characters (http://unicode.coeurlumiere.com/) has codes that are five digits hexadecimal, so there are a total of 65,536 potential characters out there.

Quote from: kphoger on May 02, 2013, 11:43:22 AM
½ is alt+0189

For me ½ is alt+171. It's one of the few that I remember and use.

(however, I now see that alt+0189 works as well)

On Linux, there are no Alt codes. Instead, you can designate a key as a "Compose key" (I use right alt, but most people use one of the useless Windows keys or that strange menu key). You press it once and then type whatever symbols the desired character is composed of. So to get a euro symbol, you type Compose+C+=, to get Ã' you type Compose+N+~, to get É you type Compose+E+'.

Compose+C+C+C+P gives you ☭.

Quote from: DTComposer on May 04, 2013, 03:34:27 PM

Quote from: kphoger on May 02, 2013, 11:43:22 AM
½ is alt+0189

For me ½ is alt+171. It's one of the few that I remember and use.

(however, I now see that alt+0189 works as well)

0189 is better because you can get ¼ and ¾ on either side of it easily.

Quote from: 1995hoo on May 03, 2013, 10:40:31 AMThe last time I saw a keyboard with "AltGr" was in the British Airways "Terraces" lounge on my last connection through Heathrow a few years ago (not coincidentally, the first time I saw a keyboard with "AltGr" was in the Concorde Room at Heathrow in 2003). I had a horrible time typing on that thing, just a few too many differences from a US-spec keyboard for me to type comfortably.

If you actually lived with and used a UK-spec keyboard for a short while (say, one month), you would rapidly become "bilingual"--it is a bit like learning to drive on the left.  The only characters that are different are ones that are used relatively infrequently in ordinary writing, such as the sterling currency symbol (£), double quote ("), and ampersat (@).  In contradistinction, the adjustment to German and French keyboard layouts is much more difficult since the positions of several letters are reversed, which makes it impossible (at least at first) to touch-type a simple text consisting only of alphanumeric characters entirely from muscle memory.  (German keyboards have a QWERTZ layout and since z is used relatively infrequently in English, they are somewhat easier for native English speakers to adjust to than French keyboards, which have an AZERTY layout.  Other European countries, such as Spain and the Netherlands, use the QWERTY layout with key reversals and substitutions which are comparatively peripheral from an English-speaking perspective.)

I am typing this post on a UK-spec keyboard, by the way, though I am American, grew up in the United States, and learned how to touch-type on a US-spec keyboard.

Quote from: kphoger on May 02, 2013, 11:43:22 AM
Am I the only who memorizes the alt codes?

ñ is alt+164
Ã' is alt+165
á is alt+160
Á is alt+0193
é is alt+130
É is alt+144
í is alt+161
Í is alt+0205
ó is alt+162

To answer your question--no.  I still remember a number of them, even for some characters which I have not had to enter using Alt codes for several years now (e.g., Alt + 156 for £).  However, I prefer not to use Alt codes if I can avoid them, for a number of reasons:

*  They are codepage-specific.  Vanilla provision for Windows computers in the US-English localization environment is either codepage 437 or 850 (which implements the three-digit Alt codes) with an overlay of codepage 1252 (ANSI for Windows) (which implements the four-digit Alt codes, most of those in ordinary usage having a leading zero).  Those codepages are not loaded on Windows computers localized for a different country-language combination, such as Japanese--for example, Alt + 156 won't produce the £ on a computer running the Japanese version of Windows.  So when my Japanese friend and I sat down to have a keyboard conversation on her computer which dealt with money amounts in the country in which we were then living (Britain), we had to write out "pounds" instead of using the sterling symbol, just to keep the talk moving along smoothly.

*  If you are writing in a context where text encoding is likely to be a factor, it frequently makes more sense to stay within the footprint of ASCII 128 than to take a chance on directly inputting a character which is then interpreted as mojibake.  When I am composing LaTeX code, for example, I have to use "\pounds{}" to produce the sterling currency symbol unless I want to mess around with the inputenc package (which is tricky to use under Windows since Notepad, which is the most convenient utility for working with text files, does not report the encoding of the currently displayed text file).

*  Just inputting the Alt code is bloody inconvenient--a minimum four keystrokes for the CP 437 combinations and five for the CP 1252 combinations, and since one key has to be held down while the others are pressed (on the numeric keypad only, don't forget--touch-typing along the top-row number keys doesn't work), both hands are taken out of use until the code is completely punched in.  For this reason I prefer to use off-the-shelf Windows keyboard layouts which offer deadkey functionality similar to what Scott5411 describes (see below).  The only Alt code I use relatively frequently when posting to this forum, for example, is Alt + 21 (CP 437) for §, nearly always for citations to the MUTCD or the Kansas Statutes Annotated.

*  Support for extended characters is uneven among the codepages.  Kphoger, a lot of the CP 1252 combinations you quoted in your original post are for characters (such as Á) which are unavailable in CP 437.  There are lots of Eastern Latin characters which are not in CP 1252, such as the dotless lowercase i (uncapitalized, unrounded i in Turkish) or the dotted uppercase I (capitalized, rounded I in Turkish).  This means I can talk correctly about Ávila and Cáceres using the combinations you quoted, but not Istanbul, Bandirma, or Diyarbakir.

*  Alt codes (and the codepages they invoke) are Windows constructs and as such are unavailable on Macs, Android OS, Linux, etc.

Quote from: Scott5114 on May 05, 2013, 02:14:47 PMOn Linux, there are no Alt codes. Instead, you can designate a key as a "Compose key" (I use right alt, but most people use one of the useless Windows keys or that strange menu key). You press it once and then type whatever symbols the desired character is composed of. So to get a euro symbol, you type Compose+C+=, to get Ã' you type Compose+N+~, to get É you type Compose+E+'.

Compose+C+C+C+P gives you ☭.

In Windows similar functionality is achieved by designating one key (usually the right-hand Alt key, which in some locales is labelled "AltGr" instead of "Alt") as the equivalent of the Compose key in your example.  Windows has long (since 98, I think) allowed you to upload custom keyboard layouts which rely on deadkey combinations to produce accented characters, but now Windows 7 has "off the shelf" keyboard layouts with this capability.  This is an important improvement since it makes the AltGr functionality accessible on shared computers where a user without administrative privileges may be able to choose a predefined keyboard layout but not to edit it or upload his or her own custom layout.

AFAIK, however, none of the Windows layouts has the CCCP Easter egg or supports Eastern Latin characters without making it unbearably difficult to work in ASCII 128.  This is why my attempts to support international characters usually stop at the eastern German and Austrian borders.  If I am in too much of a hurry to use Wikipedia redirects to grab hold of correctly accented and punctuated text that I can cut and paste into a forum post, I would rather write "Wroclaw" and take heat for not using the correctly crossed l character, than use a Western Latin-friendly German exonym like "Breslau" and have people think I am some sort of crypto-Nazi German irredentist.  It is the same with Bratislava versus Pressburg (ironically enough, the Slovak toponym is easier since it avoids the need to choose between the double s and the eszett), Kulm (properly used only for a town in North Dakota, not its namesake, the now infamous town in Poland), Grudziadz versus Graudenz, Posen versus Poznan, etc.  (This is not a problem confined to places in Europe where German exonyms have become controversial as a result of Nazi occupation and, much earlier, Bismarck's Kulturkampf and the activities of the Prussian Settlement Commission.  Izmir versus Smyrna, for example, summons the ghost of Eleftherios Venizelos and the Megali Idea.)

Anyway--returning to the topic of predefined Windows keyboard layouts--there is a US-International keyboard layout in Windows 7 which allows accented characters to be entered through AltGr and other deadkey combinations (e.g., AltGr + e for é, ` then e for è).  There is a similar layout for UK keyboards ("UK Extended") which I use for preference because I still do most of my typing on an old Logitech keyboard which has the UK physical layout and indestructible Model M-like spring-loaded keycaps, although my current laptop has a US-standard keyboard layout.  I think the UK Extended layout is better than US International because it offers access to a slightly wider range of characters, but US International is far better than the default US keyboard layout.

Windows 7 also allows the user to load multiple keyboard layouts simultaneously, switching among them as needed using Shift + Alt.  In addition to the UK Extended layout, I have the US standard layout loaded, and use it whenever I need to enter characters directly on the built-in keyboard that are not mapped to the same keys in the UK physical layout (usually the pipe and backslash since I use those characters frequently in NT batch scripts).

So, bottom line, with Windows 7 there is now absolutely no need to remember Alt codes to write the accented characters normally encountered in Spanish, French, and German, although diacritics encountered in Eastern European languages still present problems (caron, Hungarian double accent, Polish slash l, tails . . .).  I think Alt codes are still necessary for cardinal superscripts in French and Spanish, though (examples:  François I^er, 2^a Ronda de Sevilla).

Quote
AltGr

You know, that key would have been handy to know about when there about were seven of us trying to send emails from a cybercafe in México, and none of us could figure out how to type the @ symbol......

JN already hit the points I was going to make about CP 437 vs CP 1252, but there's one more technical clarification I'd like to make.

Unicode doesn't stop at 65535.  That's just the "basic multilingual plane".  Unicode was at one time technically infinite, but now it stops at hex 10FFFF, allowing for over 1,114,000 characters.  Note that the UTF-16 encoding uses a scheme called "surrogate pairs" to encode characters outside the BMP; as a side effect, it's impossible to encode in UTF16 the characters those surrogates would otherwise refer to. As a result, those codepoints technically don't exist in Unicode at all, even if they are possible to encode in UTF8 or other schemes.

---

I'm still disappointed the Unicode folks declined to allocate codepoints for Klingon.  Every fictional language/script invented by Tolkien is covered...

I only remembered [Alt] + 167 as º.  It varies by OS.  Old Windows didn't have some of the smaller numbers.  And then there's HTML entities...

Oh yeah, the C0 control code symbols (01—031) weren't implemented as of Windows 98.

And then there's often confusion between the degree symbol (° a small raised circle) and the mascuine ordinal symbol (º a small raised lowercase o) and the superscript zero (which isn't in CP1252, and I can't find in my charmap on this phone because the device's default font foesn't have that glyph).  They are not interchangeable.

PS, my phone's default sans-serif font renders π in a way which makes it recognizeable to people only familiar with the mathematical-style glyph, though it still fits in with other sans-serif characters.

I much prefer how the Mac handles special characters: we have an Option key. To get ¢, just hold down option and type a 4 (easy to remember that ¢ is related to $.) £ is option-3 (£ and #). - is option 8 (related to the * ) and ° is option-shift-8. ¡ is option-1 (¡ vs. !). π is option-p and ∏ is option-shift-p. option-/ is ÷ and option-shift-/ is ¿.

The trickier ones are the "dead keys". option-` does nothing at first, until you press an a, e, i, o, or u second. option-` then e is è. option-e then e is é. The umlaut is option-u followed by a letter, the circumflex is option-i and the eñe is option-n then n.

Quote from: bulldog1979 on August 22, 2013, 07:15:36 PM
The umlaut is option-u followed by a letter, the circumflex is option-i and the eñe is option-n then n.

Interesting that they didn't go with the default X11 Compose key combinations, which are ", ^, and ~ respectively.

I recently downloaded a free X11 Compose key emulator for Windows. It's called AllChars (http://allchars.zwolnet.com/) (there are probably a few more out there, but I didn't bother), and it maps the Compose key to the AltGr key (or Right Alt), so that for example ñ could be typed by pressing Compose+~+n. It comes in handy for when I feel like putting accented characters in my Filipino signs, or whenever I need to type "Montréal". :P

I also have an AutoHotKey script to type characters that AllChars doesn't support, like ₱ (the Philippine Peso sign), ಠ_ಠ (the look of disapproval) and (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ (self-explanatory).

Quote from: The Monarch
Quick, how do I take a screenshot? Shift, option... Crap! I made an umlaut!

Quote from: vtk on August 22, 2013, 11:41:25 PM

Quote from: The Monarch
Quick, how do I take a screenshot? Shift, option... Crap! I made an umlaut!

PrintScreen. :spin:

But for Mac, Cmd-(Control)-Shift-(3/4). Something my Apple-loving boyfriend doesn't already know.

Quote from: vtk on August 22, 2013, 11:41:25 PM

Quote from: The Monarch
Quick, how do I take a screenshot? Shift, option... Crap! I made an umlaut!

command-shift-3 for the whole screen. command-shift-4 changes the cursor to a set of cross-hairs to select a part of the screen with the height and width of the selection area indicated.  command-shift-4 then space selects a specific window only; the cursor changes to a camera and the selected windows highlight in the same shaded color as selected text.

Quote from: bulldog1979 on August 22, 2013, 07:15:36 PM
I much prefer how the Mac handles special characters: we have an Option key. To get ¢, just hold down option and type a 4 (easy to remember that ¢ is related to $.) £ is option-3 (£ and #). - is option 8 (related to the * ) and ° is option-shift-8. ¡ is option-1 (¡ vs. !). π is option-p and ∏ is option-shift-p. option-/ is ÷ and option-shift-/ is ¿.

The trickier ones are the "dead keys". option-` does nothing at first, until you press an a, e, i, o, or u second. option-` then e is è. option-e then e is é. The umlaut is option-u followed by a letter, the circumflex is option-i and the eñe is option-n then n.

I agree on the simplicity of the Mac keyboard - with the way that my brain is base-programmed, I would never be able to memorize all of those PC 'alt' codes.

Also, alt/option-e, followed any other vowel will put the Spanish accent (á, í, ó, ú) on them, too.

BTW, what is the Mac process for getting those two smiley faces that are in a post on the first page?

Mike

Quote from: bulldog1979 on August 22, 2013, 07:15:36 PM£ is option-3 (£ and #)

pound and hash are related how? ;) I like my # for hash (next to enter, shift-# is ~) and shift-3 for £. Altgr-4 for € is also useful.

I did, on one computer, have word give me greek letters for use in maths/electronics equations with keyboard shortcuts so I didn't have to remember the alt-codes, but rather just type altgr-u for mu or whatever.

Quote from: english si on August 23, 2013, 12:41:55 PM
pound and hash are related how? ;)

in the US, # is called "pound".  not sure why... or why both # and £ ended up above 3.

Quote from: agentsteel53 on August 23, 2013, 12:50:02 PM

Quote from: english si on August 23, 2013, 12:41:55 PM
pound and hash are related how? ;)

in the US, # is called "pound".  not sure why... or why both # and £ ended up above 3.

It's called a pound because it's an abbreviation for pounds of weight.  Typical grocer's sign:  sungold tomatoes 3.50 /#

Quote from: agentsteel53 on August 23, 2013, 12:50:02 PM

Quote from: english si on August 23, 2013, 12:41:55 PM
pound and hash are related how? ;)

in the US, # is called "pound".

knew that - hence the ;)

Quoteor why both # and £ ended up above 3.

different needs in the UK and US - we use hash more rarely. Ditto (pre internet) @ (shift-and-key-next-to-hash) and " (shift-2).

Quote from: kkt on August 23, 2013, 12:58:36 PMIt's called a pound because it's an abbreviation for pounds of weight.  Typical grocer's sign:  sungold tomatoes 3.50 /#

What's wrong with lb? Oh, that's latin and far too high class for you Americans, yet perfectly acceptable for our salt of the earth market sellers.

Our typical sign would look like this:
Sungold Tom's
£4.41/kg
£2/lb

They have to put kg, as they have to sell in kg, though they and customers deal in lbs. Many market traders now have bowls and fill them and sell them by-bowl rather than by-weight. this sign would be accompanied (in the South East) by cockney shouts of "lovely toms. two pound a pound. lovely toms".

Quote from: english si on August 23, 2013, 02:40:26 PMthey have to sell in kg

why?

given that the tomatoes are right there, the customer can decide if [x tomatoes] for [y pounds] is a good deal, regardless of how they are weighed on the scale.

customer: "I'd like to purchase these tomatoes."
clerk: [puts them on the scale] "that'll be 6.49.  cash or credit?"

I could understand that a mail-order firm, or any place where you cannot inspect the merchandise before you place the order, you don't want to rack your brain trying to figure out how many nanobuicks of product you need... but at the fruit stand, why bother?

Quote from: english si on August 23, 2013, 02:40:26 PM
What's wrong with lb? Oh, that's latin and far too high class for you Americans, yet perfectly acceptable for our salt of the earth market sellers.

Our typical sign would look like this:
Sungold Tom's
£4.41/kg
£2/lb

They have to put kg, as they have to sell in kg, though they and customers deal in lbs. Many market traders now have bowls and fill them and sell them by-bowl rather than by-weight. this sign would be accompanied (in the South East) by cockney shouts of "lovely toms. two pound a pound. lovely toms".

Both "lb" and "#" are used in the US to denote "pound"  You never see "kg" ever in a produce section of a supermarket.  "L" is reserved almost exclusively for large pop bottles and smaller water bottles; otherwise, "oz" and "gal" are seen.  Milk is always "1/2 pt", "pt", "qt", or "gal".  Dual labeling is common, but few use the metric side of it.

Quote from: agentsteel53 on August 23, 2013, 02:53:37 PM

Quote from: english si on August 23, 2013, 02:40:26 PMthey have to sell in kg

why?

It's an EU thing.  They require everything to be marked in metric even if it is for domestic consumption.

European units of measurement directives (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_units_of_measurement_directives)

The assholes even want to prohibit dual labeling, which, by the way, is mandated by the Federal Fair Packaging and Labeling Act in the US.

Quote from: agentsteel53 on August 23, 2013, 02:53:37 PM

Quote from: english si on August 23, 2013, 02:40:26 PMthey have to sell in kg

why?

given that the tomatoes are right there, the customer can decide if [x tomatoes] for [y pounds] is a good deal, regardless of how they are weighed on the scale.

customer: "I'd like to purchase these tomatoes."
clerk: [puts them on the scale] "that'll be 6.49.  cash or credit?"

Credit? not at a market...

But yes, I don't really get it either. You can buy a bowl/bag of unspecified weight for a fixed amount and bowl isn't a fixed unit from stall to stall (or even from bowl to bowl).

I guess it is as metric is such a good system you have to make alternatives illegal to get people to use it (and they still don't - using the bowl/bag loophole, or having the price per pound as the round one, or making 568ml cans/bottles of beer and 568ml multiple bottles of milk with big numbers without units on it saying how many lots of 568ml it is). I'm pretty certain that the rules are petty enough to demand that if you are outrageous enough to put customary units on it, then the metric has to be first and the customary cannot be bigger (hence no units with the big numbers on milk).

Quote from: Brandon on August 23, 2013, 03:05:44 PMIt's an EU thing.  They require everything to be marked in metric even if it is for domestic consumption.

European units of measurement directives (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_units_of_measurement_directives)

As much as I loathe the EU, I believe it was part of the failed metrication attempt of the 60s, rather than the EU. The EU just meant that the law was enforced over-zealously and those publishing prices only in lbs, but using metric scales and a price per kg value to calculate the cost, was illegal.

Draft beer and cider isn't metric - must be sold in either 1/3 pint, 1/2 pint, 1 pint or 1/2 pint multiples. UK got an opt out clause there. There's something else IIRC, but I don't know what.

Maybe I should just say that someone weighs (for example) £150.

:-D

Mike

Quote from: english si on August 23, 2013, 02:40:26 PM
What's wrong with lb? Oh, that's latin and far too high class for you Americans, yet perfectly acceptable for our salt of the earth market sellers.

Nothing's wrong with lb, it's just extra writing and extra space on the sign.  I don't believe either your grocers or ours are understanding the Latin, it's just a memorized abbreviation.

Quote from: english si on August 23, 2013, 03:22:26 PM
Credit? not at a market...

Most grocery stores here take credit cards.  Farmer's markets with stands set up temporarily generally don't.

I almost never see # actually used for pounds of weight. If I do see it, it seems more like a typographical cheat invented by someone who thought they were being clever.

I've never once in my life ever seen "#" used as an abbreviation for "pounds" [weight]. ALWAYS "lb", and some stores either spell out "per pound" or don't even include that at all when it's obvious.

Quote from: kkt on August 23, 2013, 05:24:10 PM

Quote from: english si on August 23, 2013, 03:22:26 PM
Credit? not at a market...

Most grocery stores here take credit cards.  Farmer's markets with stands set up temporarily generally don't.

I was talking markets, not grocery stores.

Grocery stores will have typed signs, and only the big supermarkets have the economy of scale to have £/lb on them (as its extraneous info, due to the requirement to sell in metric weights).

lb, handwritten, would take up the same size as # if the hash wants to look like a hash rather than a badly drawn +. Plus UK signs have to have the kg, so two letters is no hardship

PS, to drag us back on topic - ≈ apparently has an alt code of 247, though I get ¸ with that code.

Quote from: english si on August 24, 2013, 05:29:23 AM

Quote from: kkt on August 23, 2013, 05:24:10 PM

Quote from: english si on August 23, 2013, 03:22:26 PM
Credit? not at a market...

Most grocery stores here take credit cards.  Farmer's markets with stands set up temporarily generally don't.

I was talking markets, not grocery stores.

Ah, this is another definition problem.  Here, "market" is synonymous with "grocery store", and if we mean just the kind in tents that fold up and have no power, internet, or telephone lines with which to charge credit cards, we use the phrase "farmer's market".

Alt+ does not work for me.  I hold down the ALT key, type in the + and the numbers. Nothing happens.  What am I doing wrong?

Rick

You don't type the plus. You hold down Alt while typing the number - much as you would use shift+1234 to get !@#$ (and I would get !"£$).

You also have to use the number keys on the right of the keyboard, IIRC (doesn't work on my laptop which lacks them).

---

kkt - separated by a common language!

Quote from: english si on August 24, 2013, 01:27:11 PM
You don't type the plus. You hold down Alt while typing the number - much as you would use shift+1234 to get !@#$ (and I would get !"£$).

Hey there, no need for profanity!

Seriously though, there ought to be a short video about how to enter "alt codes" on Windows machines...