Keyboard - hidden symbols.

[Bear Cub]

Had a thought recently (it hurt)whilst responding to a message I saw from another ppruner.

On a keyboard configured for USA typing, if you hold down ALT and tap 0163 - you get the British Pound sign "£".

How about a series of posts giving hints for hidden symbols to other users?

If so, tell whether your keyboard is configured UK, USA...or other.

Few others I've found...

Alt 0163 = £
Alt 0149 = •
Alt 0169 = ©
Alt 0174 = ®
Alt 0176 = °
Alt 0177 = ±

Cut and paste...print...stick on computer!!

------------------
Hunting is bad!!
Support the right to arm Bears!!

[ORAC]

The Windows 95 TrueType Character Sets

Windows 95 includes three kinds of TrueType faces:

Text typefaces (Times New Roman, Arial, and Courier New), Symbol, and Wingdings.

To access characters that cannot be typed directly from the keyboard use the Character Map applet, or:

I) Make sure the Num Lock light is on.
2) Hold down the Alt key while typing the appropriate number on the numeric keypad.
3) Release the Alt key.

The associated numbers are:

33 to 127
0128 to 0255.

™ (0153)
¿ (0191)
etc

They are different in each font.

[fobotcso]

My keyboard is UK.

Num Lock ON, Hold down "Alt", select No on Key Pad, release Alt

° 0176
¼ 0188
½ 0189
¾ 0190
± 0177
² 0178
³ 0179
× 0215
÷ 0247

À 0192
à 0224
 0194
â 0226
ä 0228
Æ 0198
æ 0230

Ç 0199
ç 0231

È 0200
è 0232
É 0201
é 0233
Ê 0202
ê 0234
Ë 0203
' 0235

Î 0204
' 0238
Ï 0207
ï 0239

Ô 0212
ô 0244
Π0140
œ 0156

Ù 0217
ù 0249
Û 0219
û 0251
Ü 0220
ü 0252

ÿ 0255

Sorry this is so long. This is the shape of the cut-out I have on the edge of my monitor.

fobo


[This message has been edited by fobotcso (edited 12 August 2000).]

[FL310]

as ORAC said..it depends on the font selected.

To check all your (not) so hidden characters click on
Start
Programs
Accessories
System Tools
Character Map

and you can select from the fonts installed, you can copy the individual character and you can also see the ALT-???? combination for quick typing.

[fobotcso]

Fellas,

We should try to keep this simple; try the following link.
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q113/7/40.asp for an out-of-date but generic answer.

Life is too short to check all fonts and all symbols! But I believe that my short list of symbols above (writing in French mostly) works for all normal day to day fonts such as Arial, Garamond, Courier, Bodoni and Times New Roman. If a font supports a given symbol at all, it will always require the same code. It a font doesn't support a given symbol, eg ¾, then if you entered Alt/0190 you may get a surpise.

In NT4, FL310's click sequence is one step too long. You will find Character Map in Accessories.

Cheers, fobo.

[Bear Cub]

I've never done Num Lock - still works.

------------------
Hunting is bad!!
Support the right to arm Bears!!

[sprocket]

¾ & ?' Ú t B ™ © å © À W ð
Just testing

I notice that the symbols are different to what was on my word doc.
Is that because this bulletin board isn't a word doc. ??


[This message has been edited by sprocket (edited 13 August 2000).]

[fobotcso]

Bear Cub, Oh yeah! so it does, but not always. I was having a play to check whether NumLock was needed and several characters appeared in the edit box just fine with out NumLock. Until I got to the degree symbol (° - 0176). With NumLock off, when I hit Alt/0176 the PPRuNe window closed and a second Internet Explorer screen opened! At this point I gave up. I'll stick to NumLock ON.

Sprocket, my list is really meant for MS applications and apparently works adequately here but obviously there are funnies. What number codes did you use and was NumLock ON? Cheers, fobo.

[ORAC]

These are just the Win95 TrueType Character sets, which obviously appear when you run an Office app under Win95.

The 0 to 127 codes are identical to their couinterparts in the IBM PC-8 set (also called the ASCII or lower ASCII set).

The characters above 127 are Win specific and the addition of the leading 0 (eg 0128) allows backwards compatibility.

Font designers are supposed to use the standard set. This is, unfortunately, limited to 224 characters by the possible 8-bit combinations, minus the 32 nonprinting "control" characters. Any font designer wishing to add specialised characters (scientific, wingdings etc) must drop standard characters to put them in their place.

The forum obviously uses a different font to you (highly unlikely to be Win95!! (Sun Solaris/Star??) so the codes can produce different characters.

[This message has been edited by ORAC (edited 13 August 2000).]