# Most Useful Discovery for Online Woodworkers EVER EVER EVER



## Droogs (16 Aug 2022)

If you have a number pad on your keyboard, you can insert the degree symbol by just pressing the left ALT key and the numbers 0176 sequentially 
°


Woohoooo


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## dzj (16 Aug 2022)

6°......it works!


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## MikeK (16 Aug 2022)

And for the enlightened group, the Option-Shift-8 works on the Mac.  °°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°


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## dannyr (16 Aug 2022)

6deg


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## Phil Pascoe (16 Aug 2022)

I can't get to 6. 017 takes me out of UKW.


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## imageel (16 Aug 2022)

On Windoze charmap is your friend....

As in press 'windoze key', type char <return>


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## --Tom-- (16 Aug 2022)

Most of the time I cheat and use ctrl&shift&+ for superscript then use an o for degrees


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## Fitzroy (16 Aug 2022)

as an engineer I use these three all the time.

° - Alt 0176
³ - Alt 0179
² - Alt 0178


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## Droogs (16 Aug 2022)

Ohh X³ & Y² is useful too

@MikeK by enlightened you mean "should be burned at the stake"?



Today's turning into a good day


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## Sgian Dubh (16 Aug 2022)

Alt0169 = ©. Handy for copyrighting text you write and images such as photos you take and drawings you create, especially if you publish your work and are bothered about asserting or defending your intellectual property.
Alt0177 = ±. Useful for a range either side of a specific number , e.g., North American kiln operators generally aiming to dry furniture grade wood to 7% MC ±2%.
Alt0228 = ä, useful for Häfele (hardware, etc), or anywhere else where that accent, the name of which escapes me at the moment (umlaut, maybe?), applies.
Slainte.


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## Phil Pascoe (16 Aug 2022)

it is indeed an umlaut, or a dierisis.


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## Inspector (16 Aug 2022)

MikeK said:


> And for the enlightened group, the Option-Shift-8 works on the Mac.  °°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°


On my iMac I press Option 0 (zero not an oh) and the degree symbol º magically appears. 

Pete


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## thetyreman (16 Aug 2022)

™


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## TRITON (16 Aug 2022)

I dont like messing with the keyboard as in the past its gone askew and stopped working properly. After that I decided to leave well alone.


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## D_W (16 Aug 2022)

I've always done this as 1959

º

though knowing that that is just a numerical repeat of something earlier - as mentioned above. 

I'm sure I'll never remember the shorter and easier number.


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## Phil Pascoe (16 Aug 2022)

None of it works on my keyboard as it is, and I haven't the computer literacy to find out how to get it to.


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## J-G (16 Aug 2022)

D_W said:


> I've always done this as 1959
> 
> º


That's not a 'Degree' sign it's the feminine Ordinal. Often use for Nº to denote 'number' or (for Left-pondians) #


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## J-G (16 Aug 2022)

Phil Pascoe said:


> None of it works on my keyboard as it is, and I haven't the computer literacy to find out how to get it to.


I suspect that you don't have [NumLock] 'ON' which means that you actually type [Ins][End] & [Home] - and of course [Home] takes you out of UKW.


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## J-G (16 Aug 2022)

I've had the attached .PDF document on my desktop for many years - obviously only useful for the enlightened (those using Windows)


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## D_W (16 Aug 2022)

J-G said:


> That's not a 'Degree' sign it's the feminine Ordinal. Often use for Nº to denote 'number' or (for Left-pondians) #



oh my. I had no idea. When I do it in notepad and then in word, they all look different.


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## J-G (16 Aug 2022)

D_W said:


> oh my. I had no idea. When I do it in notepad and then in word, they all look different.


To some extent, the default 'Font' in use will show it differently. Many fonts don't have the underline but a slightly larger 'o' than they use for the Degree.


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## Noel (16 Aug 2022)

On an iPhone/iPad etc hold zero and select 0 or °


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## J-G (16 Aug 2022)

Sgian Dubh said:


> Alt0228 = ä, useful for Häfele (hardware, etc), or anywhere else where that accent, the name of which escapes me at the moment (umlaut, maybe?), applies.


Umlaut if you are using German. Diaeresis is the more general term for this Diacritical Mark.

I'm just about to run a Zoom Quiz and one round is using various 'Symbols' including the Diaeresis, Silcrow, Thorn, Obelus etc.


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## D_W (16 Aug 2022)

J-G said:


> To some extent, the default 'Font' in use will show it differently. Many fonts don't have the underline but a slightly larger 'o' than they use for the Degree.


 my version of word has a strange reaction to alt-1959. It goes to a font that I've not heard of and ends up with two things that look like sassy umlauts.


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## Spectric (16 Aug 2022)

The one I have always used is from the ASCI character set and is ALT-248 °


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## J-G (16 Aug 2022)

D_W said:


> my version of word has a strange reaction to alt-1959. It goes to a font that I've not heard of and ends up with two things that look like sassy umlauts.


Using the Alt-XXXX has no affect on the Font being used. Whatever symbol/character is produced using these Alt-NumberPad entries is always determined by the font in use at the time - in fact 'after the event' - ie. when the charcters have been 'typed' - they can be selected and the font changed at will.

Attached is a .PDF showing a few versions of the same entry. You'll see that Alt-1959 & Alt-0186 produce the same character.

That was created in Word2000 which I don't normally use - WordPerfect is a vastly superior program.

I selected a few fonts at random to show just how the choice of font determines what you get.


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## D_W (16 Aug 2022)

For reasons I don't know, if I type that character in from calibri, it changes to MV boli. It could be that the font set that I have just doesn't have the character since it's an OEM and probably stripped down version of office.

If I go back to regular text, I can change the font, but as it is shown here, I can't even change the font after changing the text. 

In notepad, it shows up properly as a superscript "o" with a line under it.


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## J-G (16 Aug 2022)

D_W said:


> For reasons I don't know, if I type that character in from calibri, it changes to MV boli. It could be that the font set that I have just doesn't have the character since it's an OEM and probably stripped down version of office.
> 
> If I go back to regular text, I can change the font, but as it is shown here, I can't even change the font after changing the text.
> 
> In notepad, it shows up properly as a superscript "o" with a line under it.






Here is what I get from those two fonts.

I have no idea what is going on with your system but it must be down to your copy of Office. It's certainly nothing to do with using Alt-XXXX.

The character you get is a Diaeresis/Umlaut but I can't hazzard a guess as to which font it comes from. I suspect that your copy of MV Boli has been 'modified' but that still doesn't explain why you can't edit the font - nor why Office wants to change the font from Calibri.

A modified / 'cut down' version of Office would not affect the fonts - MV Boli is a standard font (I didn't even know that I had it!!) - like Calibri it (well my copy) is an OpenType - as opposed to TrueType - It's an Agfa Monotype creation though owned by Microsoft and introduced with Windows XP so nothing to do with Office per se.

Curiouser and curiouser (said Alice)!


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## J-G (16 Aug 2022)

A little research and I see that what I thought could be a Diaeresis is in fact a Diacritical mark in the Thaana Script used to write the language of the Maldives, which is what MV Boli was designed for.

It's used above or below the basic vowel symbol to indicate either 'aa' or 'ee' ...





When I awoke this morning there is no way I could have thought that I'd be researching a language/writing system that I'd never even heard of !!

Every day is a school day 

I suggest that your copy of MV Boli is one that has the Thaana characters in but that still doesn't explain why you can't edit or why Office selects it. . . . .


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## ajs (16 Aug 2022)

Spectric said:


> The one I have always used is from the ASCI character set and is ALT-248 °


To nitpick that isn't an ASCII character - those only go up to 127. What you get in the range 128-255 depends on the character encoding ("code page") in use which varies between systems - what you see may well not match what someone else sees. The numbers starting with 0 are a different system and should be the same for everyone.

Of course real computers have a compose key which makes entering oddball characters easy...


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## D_W (16 Aug 2022)

J-G said:


> A little research and I see that what I thought could be a Diaeresis is in fact a Diacritical mark in the Thaana Script used to write the language of the Maldives, which is what MV Boli was designed for.
> 
> It's used above or below the basic vowel symbol to indicate either 'aa' or 'ee' ...
> View attachment 141837
> ...



My PC is refurbished. I kind of wonder if the seller isn't as honest as they claimed to be.


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## clogs (17 Aug 2022)

did have a go and now all the writing on this forum is so small I need my glases..
in future it'll be just DEG's.....
It'll take days to sort this mess out....OH Bxxger"....


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## J-G (17 Aug 2022)

clogs said:


> did have a go and now all the writing on this forum is so small I need my glases..
> in future it'll be just DEG's.....
> It'll take days to sort this mess out....OH Bxxger"....


Totally unconnected with any use of [Num Lock] or Alt-XXXX codes. To enlarge the display (most web pages) hold down [Ctrl] and press [+] - each press enlarges by a %age - pressing [-] reduces the size,


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## Scruples (17 Aug 2022)

Droogs said:


> If you have a number pad on your keyboard, you can insert the degree symbol by just pressing the left ALT key and the numbers 0176 sequentially
> °
> 
> 
> Woohoooo


That's neat. I use Microsoft's Character Map, installed in Windows, for all my odd character needs. 

² ¼ ½ ¾ ° é etc....


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## Jester129 (17 Aug 2022)

So how can I get a tick mark please?


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## Cooper (17 Aug 2022)

Inspector said:


> On my iMac I press Option 0 (zero not an oh) and the degree symbol º magically appears.


I'm a Mac user but obviously not enlightened. 
Which is the Option key? I know shift and can see the numbers and shift alternatives. 
While we're at it is there a trick, without having to remember how to use symbols, to get a Euro sign?
Martin


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## Adam W. (17 Aug 2022)

€

option 2, it's the one in between control and command at the bottom left by the space bar.


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## pe2dave (17 Aug 2022)

Droogs said:


> If you have a number pad on your keyboard, you can insert the degree symbol by just pressing the left ALT key and the numbers 0176 sequentially
> °
> 
> 
> Woohoooo


If you have the same OS as @Droogs ...


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## Dr Al (17 Aug 2022)

In my job, I use a lot of symbols when typing and I got fed up with the alt codes as they seem such a backwards way of doing it. To make my life easier I wrote a little application (written in python, but can be compiled to a windows executable so it doesn't require python) that makes symbol entry much easier (in my opinion). With it, you hit Win+K (or whatever key combination you've configured) and a very simple window pops up:






In that window, you type two characters. When you type the second character, the window disappears and a symbol gets pasted into whichever application you were using before pressing the shortcut. So, for example, I hit Win+K then Co and the result is ©.

The symbol obviously depends on which two characters you type, but I think they're a lot more intuitive than the alt codes (I didn't invent them: they came from a text editor called Vim that has native support for these codes). Examples:

DG makes °
2S makes ²
2s makes ₂
12 makes ½
-: makes ÷
+- makes ±
OK makes ✓
>= makes ≥
=> makes ⇒
TM makes ™
/- makes †
m* makes μ
l* makes λ
p* makes π
W* makes Ω (the letter, * pattern works for all the Greek alphabet letters)
c, makes ç
e' makes é
e> makes ê
e: makes ë
O/ makes Ø
?= makes ≅
!= makes ≠
-N makes – (en-dash)
... and the list goes on

The application used to be published on bitbucket before they removed support for the version control system it was written in. I keep meaning to release it somewhere else (on my website if nothing else), but have never got round to it. I use it many, many times a day and would hate to have to go back to using ALT codes (especially since I sometimes use a laptop without a numeric keyboard and the ALT codes don't work on the top row number keys). However, I guess I'm probably relatively unusual in the number of times a day I type μ, ° and ±, so I'm not sure how widely appealing my little application would actually be!

The lookup table I have printed by my desk (not that I have to refer to it very often as I find most of the codes easy to remember):


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## brocher (17 Aug 2022)

Inspector said:


> On my iMac I press Option 0 (zero not an oh) and the degree symbol º magically appears.
> 
> Pete


Pete, that's a good quick option - which works! ººººººººº


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## GuitardoctorW7 (17 Aug 2022)

Jester129 said:


> So how can I get a tick mark please?


Option V on a Mac


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## MikeK (17 Aug 2022)

Adam W. said:


> €
> 
> option 2, it's the one in between control and command at the bottom left by the space bar.



On my Macs, I have to use Option-Shift-2 for the € symbol. Using Option-2 gives me the ™ symbol. Option-3 gives me the £ symbol, which comes in handy sometimes.

Another feature of the Mac OS is holding any of the keys that have an international option will bring up a window showing the options. Pressing the number corresponding to the character inserts the character where the cursor is. To insert the Umlaut "o", I press "o" for an extra second and then press 2. Normally, I use the Option-U command for any Umlaut characters because it's almost muscle memory now.


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## Pineapple (17 Aug 2022)

Droogs said:


> If you have a number pad on your keyboard, you can insert the degree symbol by just pressing the left ALT key and the numbers 0176 sequentially
> °
> 
> 
> Woohoooo


Without a number-pad; so I just use the star-key = * (SHIFT*8)


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## Chris70 (17 Aug 2022)

On my iPhone I have to change the language to French to obtain º from dwelling on the ‘O’, else in English that option just isn’t there!?


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## Stevekane (17 Aug 2022)

Chris70 said:


> On my iPhone I have to change the language to French to obtain º from dwelling on the ‘O’, else in English that option just isn’t there!?


It works great on my iPad but on my older iPhone holding the 0 gives me a whole range of O based versions,,,Im afraid I couldn't tell you what exactly because my education didn't run to more than the basics,,,fascinating stuff though.
Steve


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## Spectric (17 Aug 2022)

J-G said:


> WordPerfect is a vastly superior program.


Along with quatro pro for spreadsheets, unfortunately the power of marketing allows the tail to wag the dog and hence the rule of microsoft.


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## Inspector (17 Aug 2022)

For an iMac you can bring up a Character Viewer that has emojis, math symbols, currency symbols, etc, which can be dragged and dropped into whatever you are writing. ➤➲➵Ωℳ℥₢﷼€£⨌⨊⅋

Open System Preferences
Select the Keyboard
Tick the Show keyboard and emoji viewers in the menu bar
An icon shows up in the top left of the screen

When you need a symbol click it and the Show Emoji & Symbols.
Pick the things you need and then drag and drop the symbol
Close the box when you're done.

I suspect there are similar goodies in MacBooks and iPads.

Pete


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## clogs (17 Aug 2022)

Inspector, u lot......
how do u know all this [email protected]

I could never find out to add a photo to an email for years....
my mate stayed with us for a bit and I got his 5 year old daughter to show me how....
hahaha......I'm just dumb I guess.....I was about 60 then.....
mind I wasn't born with a phone in me hand....
our tech as a kid was two tin cans and a length of string....


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## Inspector (17 Aug 2022)

I picked up a few bits and pieces since getting the iMac almost a dozen years ago. Anything I don't know I just pose the question on how to do something in a search and an answer will pop up. My childhood tech was a knife, an axe and a bunch of yelling.

Pete


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## Adam W. (17 Aug 2022)

I do Danish on my English macbøøkluft.


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## Torx (17 Aug 2022)

ALT 0216 is my favorite / most used Ø


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## Droogs (17 Aug 2022)

@Adam W. The sum of my Dansk 
fem Øl tak
hvor kommer du fra
hvad heder du
hvor gammel er du
du er smuk

Learned in my late teens when stationed at Karup
all a young lad need know


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## Adam W. (17 Aug 2022)

Droogs said:


> @Adam W. The sum of my Dansk
> 
> du er smuk


Why, thank you!


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## Cooper (18 Aug 2022)

Droogs said:


> em Øl tak
> hvor kommer du fra
> hvad heder du
> hvor gammel er du
> du er smuk


Did you have much luck?
I struggled to get this into google translate. Copy and paste gave a page of code. And the spelling is counter intuitive for me. And why 5 beers?


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## 2sheds (18 Aug 2022)

Dr Al said:


> In my job, I use a lot of symbols when typing and I got fed up with the alt codes as they seem such a backwards way of doing it. To make my life easier I wrote a little application (written in python, but can be compiled to a windows executable so it doesn't require python) that makes symbol entry much easier (in my opinion). With it, you hit Win+K (or whatever key combination you've configured) and a very simple window pops up:
> 
> View attachment 141847
> 
> ...


That's excellent Dr Al. If you do decide to publish the Windows exe I'd love a copy. I don't need these symbols/special characters/why much but when I do it is always a pain to find the right symbol in the right font.

Thanks
Steve


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## Julie (18 Aug 2022)

MikeK said:


> And for the enlightened group, the Option-Shift-8 works on the Mac.  °°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°


I Think...Therefore iMac !


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## Droogs (18 Aug 2022)

Cooper said:


> Did you have much luck?
> I struggled to get this into google translate. Copy and paste gave a page of code. And the spelling is counter intuitive for me. And why 5 beers?


Squadies always buy in rounds and yes I was very lucky as a young lad, probably because I had hair then


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## Keithgrif (19 Aug 2022)

A bit more precision needed in my day job, I regularly use:
Alt 0181 - µm for micrometers and
Alt 0197 - Å for Angstroms, 10^(-10)m


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## Phil Pascoe (22 Aug 2022)

Alt Codes List of Alt Key Codes Symbols







www.alt-codes.net


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## Yojevol (22 Aug 2022)

There's also Windows Accessories - Character Map which is easy to use on the odd occasion.


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## chaoticbob (22 Aug 2022)

Dr Al said:


> In my job, I use a lot of symbols when typing and I got fed up with the alt codes as they seem such a backwards way of doing it. To make my life easier I wrote a little application (written in python, but can be compiled to a windows executable so it doesn't require python) that makes symbol entry much easier (in my opinion). With it, you hit Win+K (or whatever key combination you've configured) and a very simple window pops up:
> 
> View attachment 141847
> 
> ...


The Alt+<numeric code> thing (being a Microsoft convention I think?) doesn't work at all on Linux. The Linux (or at least Gnome) way of doing it is is pretty much the same as you've described, except that there is no need for a window to pop up. As I'm typing if I do <Scroll Lock> Co I get © . <Scroll Lock> is the default Compose key, but it can be configured to whatever you want. I agree that this is a much easier way of doing it. The two letter codes in Linux/Gnome are often (but not always) as in your table - unsurprising perhaps as vim is derived from vi which was written for Unix, so branches of the same tree. Linux also allows Unicode characters, for example 𝜒 hasn't got a two-letter code but can be had with <Ctrl>+<Shift>+<u> 1D712 <Enter>. Ugly, but sometimes necessary! No idea how to do Unicode in Windows or MacOS, but presumably possible?

Bob.


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## Dr Al (5 Jan 2023)

Dr Al said:


> In my job, I use a lot of symbols when typing and I got fed up with the alt codes as they seem such a backwards way of doing it. To make my life easier I wrote a little application (written in python, but can be compiled to a windows executable so it doesn't require python) that makes symbol entry much easier (in my opinion). With it, you hit Win+K (or whatever key combination you've configured) and a very simple window pops up:View attachment 141847
> 
> 
> In that window, you type two characters. When you type the second character, the window disappears and a symbol gets pasted into whichever application you were using before pressing the shortcut. So, for example, I hit Win+K then Co and the result is ©.
> ...



I finally pulled my finger out and ported my "digraph" tool to C++ so it's easy to publish as a Windows executable. If anyone's interested in downloading it and being able to type symbols intuitively rather than using obscure Alt-codes, these are the links:

Source code (and detailed README with instructions on how to install & use): GitHub - abudden/digraph: Digraph is a tool to simplify typing of symbols
Releases (executable binary): Releases · abudden/digraph


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## tibi (5 Jan 2023)

Here is a categorized list of alt codes, if someone finds that useful





Alt Codes List of Alt Key Codes Symbols







www.alt-codes.net


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## pe2dave (5 Jan 2023)

Do you have the Python version still? I'd be interested,
or is the C version viable in Linux please?


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## ajs (5 Jan 2023)

pe2dave said:


> Do you have the Python version still? I'd be interested,
> or is the C version viable in Linux please?


Any X server you are likely to encounter will natively support a compose key, allowing similar digraph-based entry. Not too sure about Wayland so it may depend on the distribution.


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## Dr Al (5 Jan 2023)

pe2dave said:


> Do you have the Python version still? I'd be interested,
> or is the C version viable in Linux please?



I have the python version, but the C version is viable in Linux with a similar amount of effort to be honest. Neither will work directly out of the box on Linux, but I don't think it'd be hard to get it at least mostly working on Linux.

The incompatibility (in both python and C versions) is down to the way it sends the character to the application you're typing into. The digraph app puts the required character onto the clipboard (in a cross-platform manner) and then sends a keyboard shortcut (Shift-Insert by default) to the last active window. That process of sending a keyboard shortcut to another application is platform specific.

The critical platform specific code is in the three functions that start here: digraph/windows_specific.cpp at master · abudden/digraph

I'm afraid I don't know enough about Linux GUI programming to know how to make that bit work on Linux. I guess a simple option would be to just do nothing and let the user manually paste after entering the digraph.

Anyway, if you want to chat it through and I'll see what I can do to help, it's probably best that we chat over email rather than on this forum. The first part of my email address is "al". The second part is my website address without the www. (see signature) - sorry, I don't want to write it out in plain text and make it easy for the spambots!

Edit: as @ajs has said, there should be more direct methods built into Linux anyway (I think that's where the digraphs that my program uses originally came from, although I extracted them from the Vim text editor). I guess the advantage of my tool on Linux would be the optional larger GUI to help you choose which characters to type.


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## ajs (5 Jan 2023)

ajs said:


> Any X server you are likely to encounter will natively support a compose key, allowing similar digraph-based entry. Not too sure about Wayland so it may depend on the distribution.


According to Wikipedia the default for X.org maps the Compose key to Shift-AltGr so I'd try that in the first instance, so e.g Shift-AltGr , c (That's Shift and AltGr together, followed by comma, followed by "c") would give you a c-cedilla. Not in front of a Unix system right now and even when I get home it'll be a NetBSD system with a physical compose key, so I'd tend to take that on trust for the minute.


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## Robbo3 (6 Jan 2023)

Jester129 said:


> So how can I get a tick mark please?


Took me ages to find these ✓ ✔
✓ = Alt 10003
✔ = Alt 10004
I keep a text file of the different characters & their codes on the PC as it's often easier to copy & paste.


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## Dr Al (6 Jan 2023)

Robbo3 said:


> Took me ages to find these ✓ ✔
> ✓ = Alt 10003
> ✔ = Alt 10004
> I keep a text file of the different characters & their codes on the PC as it's often easier to copy & paste.


With my app, you get a tick mark with the two characters OK: ✓

The equivalent cross is XX: ✗


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