Special Character Shortcuts
Glen Walker (2585) 469 posts |
OK following on from my “keyboard shortcuts” post I have been wondering about special characters. I know that I can type some from the keyboard by using the Alt key (°©®¢¶þ¼€³²¹ and so on) and I can get the rest using the Chars program (actually I use Martins excellent XChars) but is there a way to insert characters using keyboard so that if I had a programmable keyboard I could program a special key or two. My keyboard would have three layers (which is relatively easy to do with many re-programmable keyboards) one for Windows, one for Linux and one for RISC OS – each layer would change the macro settings so that I could type special characters. For example if I wanted to type an em dash (—) I would:
There are probably only a few that I would use on a regular basis—the em dash being the key one! |
Rick Murray (539) 13417 posts |
151 because that is the character code for the dash. It’s the same in RISC OS only you omit the first 0 (give it a three digit code). Take a look also at https://www.heyrick.co.uk/software/morekeys/ |
Clive Semmens (2335) 3134 posts |
You used to be able to write your own keyboard handlers using !IKHG – I really miss that. Instead of four or five hard-to-remember keystrokes for special characters you could have all the ones you actually wanted to use frequently accessible with just two easily memorized keystrokes. Upped the productivity of our journals office quite a bit. |
Glen Walker (2585) 469 posts |
I always thought it was 2014 that was the character code…ah well at least there is an easy-ish way to do it (not so easy for me because I don’t have a physical numberpad but maybe I could write a macro for the keyboard which would pass the same character code–really depends on which particular keyboard I get) Now I’ve just discovered something: – is the result of Alt+151 (which looks to me like an en dash) Just checked on Windows and Alt+0151 is the em dash and Alt+0152 is a tilde – does this mean that Windows and RISC OS are using two different sets of character codes? |
Rick Murray (539) 13417 posts |
Another, ahem, limitation. One should be able to augment the keyboard behaviour without having to create an entire replacement keyboard handler. |
Clive Semmens (2335) 3134 posts |
Yes, that would be even better! Although when I made keyboard handlers for Deva Nagari & Cyrillic key layouts, I possibly wanted to write whole keyboard handlers? Or at least complete key mappings. |
Clive Semmens (2335) 3134 posts |
A little aside here. A Microsoft fellow (who should probably remain nameless) who had heard of my exploits contacted me to write a PC keyboard handler for this lunatic project: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10153284003427762 – I declined, but told him my son would happily do it for him, which was duly agreed. Not a bad way for a 14-year-old to earn a few bob – I think it was £1,200 in fact. |
Glen Walker (2585) 469 posts |
Ah fantastic! You wouldn’t need to hold down a modifier key for that…just spend a few minutes hunting for the correct key. I’ve always favoured smaller keyboards (I think the term is “ten-key-less” although I’ve seen one that is even smaller recently) but do have respect for people who use big battleships like that one. I like to have space for my mouse on the left side and a notepad on the right, although my current keyboard has a mouse built in so I have space on my left for drumming my fingers on the desk in frustration when my boss is being irritating. PS I modified my post above but took so long in doing it you both replied before I’d finished! |
Clive Semmens (2335) 3134 posts |
It’s easy to touch-type on a QWERTY keyboard augmented with modifier keys – CTRL, ALT & SHIFT is sufficient to access a huge number of characters. You can’t touch-type on a keyboard like that monster – well, not beyond the QWERTY area, anyway. |
Clive Semmens (2335) 3134 posts |
I didn’t spot that at first reading – or was it a later edit? 8~) |
Glen Walker (2585) 469 posts |
Yes indeed. I have a bad habit of typing things, hitting submit and then editing them straight away! |
Glen Walker (2585) 469 posts |
Don’t forget Command, Meta, Super and Alternate Graphic as well! Although admittedly the “Alt” and “Alt Graph” keys do the same for most people… I’m sure I used to use a keyboard that had normal characters on the top-face and then special characters printed on the front-face of the keys. Made it really easy to find the one you wanted. I think it was my old Mac but might have been the Sun Microstation…good idea anyway but eclipsed by the mass-market approach of lowest common denominator (and whatever is cheapest to produce to sell for the maximum profit) |
Paul Sprangers (346) 490 posts |
You may like !KeyMap, which lets you easily create your own key maps and switch between them with a single mouse click. Download from http://www.riscos.sprie.nl/Downloads/KeyMap.zip |
Clive Semmens (2335) 3134 posts |
I might if it does what I need! I’m investigating…
Except that standard keyboards don’t have them. |
Glen Walker (2585) 469 posts |
Thanks Paul, looks like an interesting program. I will download it later when I am next using my RISC OS machine. Does it allow for customization of the Alt modifier keys in that if I typed “Alt Graph+ |
Chris Hall (132) 3510 posts |
I started to get rather frustrated that I had to type different things in different contexts: left single quote was &91 in Excel and RISC OS but &90 in Arial so I just made a long list of how to type the character in various contexts and then wrote a programme to convert where necessary! |
Clive Semmens (2335) 3134 posts |
Ah. “Key combinations […] are not yet supported.” Bit of a disappointment, that 8~( – so no typing Alt-Shift-9 for a hacek, followed by a t to get t-hacek etc. etc. 8~( That was how we had things set up at Physiology, where we wanted to be able to do international names and addresses in several languages all mixed up, every accented character under the sun without having to learn several hundred arbitrary number combinations, or look them up every time. This was in the days of 256 character fonts, so we had all the accents in a font and no accented characters: you typed the zero width accent first, then the character (just like on old fashioned typewriters) and then I had an application that kerned the accents into the correct position over the following character. (Worked with Impression Publisher.) It’d be really good if a keyboard mapper or handler could take the same modified key for accent, followed by character, and generate the Unicode… |
Glen Walker (2585) 469 posts |
My one does. “super” is the one with a little flag on, “meta” is the left “Alt” key and Alternate Graphic is usually “Alt Gr” or “Alt Graph”. Maybe its because I am more used to Linux/UNIX that I give them different names..? I also forgot the “Compose” key which had a dedicated key on my Sun computer but can be re-mapped to another key in most UNIXs. If you have a keyboard with two flag keys you can set the left one as “super” and the right one as “compose”. All done in software of course, although some people do go out and buy different keycap sets (which is actually tempting but I doubt I’ll ever have enough spare cash!) I also have a “MCE” key which I can only assume stands for “Media CEnter”? Probably a Windows thing. It doesn’t work. Oh and Command keys are on my wife’s macbook. Regarding key combinations: thats kind-of how it works on Linux. You hold down Ctrl-Shift and press “u” and then you release all the keys. There should be a little underlined u at the cursor and you then type in a number and press space or enter and the character you want appears (admittedly you have to know the unicode code). I seem to remember OpenBSD working in a similar way but my OpenBSD laptop is currently having major surgery (the fan died and I got sick of it running at 55°C) so I can’t test it. All that information is doubtless interesting but not very useful! |
Clive Semmens (2335) 3134 posts |
Yup, my Mac keyboard has Command, Option, Control, Shift and fn. But three modifier keys (duplicated right and left) is quite sufficient for most purposes! And the virtue of typing the accent first and then the character it goes with is that you only have to be able to know where a handful of accents are – you can even have a keyboard layout map (this was our one: http://clive.semmens.org.uk/CV.html?RISCOS%2FJPhysiolKB ) for any you don’t use often enough to remember – you don’t have to know a million unicode codes! |
Glen Walker (2585) 469 posts |
That actually looks pretty cool! I applaud your Ctrl & Caps Lock key positions! As an old Sun and Emacs user I spent ages re-mapping all the keyboards I have used ever since to put them in what I thought to be their “right and proper places” and its only in the past 6 months or so I have decided it was time to change (because I don’t use Emacs any more and haven’t seen a Sun PC in years). I do sometimes trip up and start typing everything in capital letters because I think I’ve just saved a file by hitting “Ctrl-S” when I’ve actually hit “Caps Lock-S”! Slowly getting used to it though… Did you try !KeyMap? It seems to have a set of fixed key mappings with no way to put a custom one in…or did I miss something obvious? |
John Williams (567) 768 posts |
Ah, at last something I know about! RISC OS has this module StopCaps which disables the Caps Lock – well worth having! |
Clive Semmens (2335) 3134 posts |
That was just a standard Acorn keyboard, that’s all. Possibly the one that came with A5000s or A540s, or the one that came with Risc PCs, I don’t remember – I made KB maps for both, the copy editors had the old machines when we first set up, eventually all replaced with Risc PCs. Yes, I had a look at !KeyMap. You can change the mappings, but you can’t get at key combinations that aren’t already mapped to something. |
David Feugey (2125) 2687 posts |
I wonder if modules generated with !IKHG could be 32bitted with Auto32 (see last edition of Drag N’ Drop) |
Clive Semmens (2335) 3134 posts |
But would they work with the rest of up-to-date RISC OS even if they were 32bitted? Would they work with a USB keyboard? |
Rick Murray (539) 13417 posts |
Would they understand Windows keys, etc? |