How do you type symbols with a Mac?
 

Hi,

How do you type symbols, ie, copyright, trademark, British pound sign, etc with a Mac. With a PC you'd normally hold down the Alt key and press a number stroke (Alt+0163 for the Pound sign).

What's the secret to getting symbols with a Mac?

Thanks

¢ is alt-4 (or Alt-$:))
£ is alt-3 (or Alt-#, aka alt-pound:))
€ is shift-alt-2
¥ is alt-y
© is alt-g
® is alt-r
™ is alt-2
etc

Open a wordprocessor and try out all the alt- and alt-shift key combinations. They're a hell of a lot easier to learn than Alt 0-1-6-3 :)

I don't think there is nice way like on PC to just use a key combo (though a fulnny thing,.... my XP machine doesn't get those key commands anymore, and no one understands why lolll)
So an alternnative:

1. Go to System Preferences and click on International
2. Click on the Input Menu tab
3. Put a check mark at the bottom to "Show input menu in menu bar" (for easier acdces later on)
4. In the section where you choose the keyboard layout, put a check mark next to Character Palette at the top of the list
5. When you need a character you show up the character palette, double click on the item you want (you can have favorites...So if you always use the same 5-6 characters, put them in favorites and have the Character palette open on that tab for quicker access)

I know that all the characters have a unicode code, but wouldn't know how to access them with the codes.



One extra thing... If you use specifically one app where you always need to use those symbols, do post what software it is, its version and also the OS X version your using. Some programs allow you to setup key combos for symbols or some easier access than using the character palette.


Ok so ahunter3 posted before me...
A trick to see which symbol is applied to which key, in the instructions above, put a check mark to KeyBoard viewer... Then open the viewer via the menu bar... If you hold any of the modifier keys such as alt, shift, command, etc and combos of those keys, the keyboard viewer will show you what symbol or character is avalable for each key on the keyboard... Makes it easy toi find keybaord shortcuts to characters.

Thanks for reminding me of this. I often find myself clicking on the Apple menu in search of KeyCaps, and Keyboard Viewer is not a bad substitute.

I dropped KeyboardViewerServer.app (/System/Library/Components/KeyboardViewer.component/Contents/SharedSupport/KeyboardViewerServer.app) into the dock so I wouldn't have to have the otherwise-useless-to-me International Menu taking up my menubar space.

By the way, the character palette ("Special Characters...") is also accessible from the Edit menu in the Finder.

I put a copy of 'Sspecial Characters' in the dock. That way it is alwyas avaialbel

But doesn't help my typing or spelling

That, even the most advanced computer can't do anything against... and yes I know there are spell checkers but haven't seem a good one yet...

In "System Preferences" > "International" >"Keyboard Layours", just enable "Unicode Hex Input". Then in a document, choose that layout, hold down the "option"-key and enter the unicode value to generate the corresponding character. But note that the codes are "unicode" - the values familiar to the original poster won't be of much use with this method.

Hm. I thought this was a good idea at the time, but the only way I know of to quit Keyboard Viewer is through Activity Monitor. Closing the Keyboard Viewer only closes the window (with no obvious way of opening it again).

If you right click or Control Click on the cion for it in the Dock it doesn't offer you to close the app or foce quit it (no worse than doing it in Activity monitor) ?

There seems to be a better way. I'm pretty sure I got this from a tip somewhere, but I can't locate the hint. It takes a little setup, but once that's done it goes quickly.

To set it up, go to this path:
/System/Library/Components/
Control-click (right-click) KeyboardViewer.component and choose Show Package Contents.
Drill further inside, to /Contents/SharedSupport/
Now make an alias of KeyboardViewerServer.app and put it somewhere.

When I open that alias (I use Spotlight), it opens the Keyboard Viewer palette. If I click the close box, it closes, leaving nothing behind, or at least not in the Dock or Application Switcher.

Excellent, thanks for all the replies.

This is essentially what I did, except that the alias is in the dock. Yes, it launches just fine and clicking the close box closes the window (leaving no trace) but in fact the process has not quit. This is evident in that double-clicking KeyboardViewerServer.app again does nothing until the process is killed in Activity Monitor.

Neither option exists for KeyboardViewerServer.app, probably because it's not meant to be launched independently of the International menu.

I tried changing some values in the info.plist file within KeyboardViewerServer.app, i.e. LSUIElement = 1 and LSBackgroundOnly = 0, without success. And with that, I'm fresh out of ideas.

The AppleScript instruction:

will display the keyboard window (in OS X 10.4.4 anyway) without the International menu enabled, and for me, it disappears from the Acivity Monitor when I close the window.

It has no, and calls no Menu.nib. It's not going to become a frontmost ap without a wrapper to set it up before calling the KeyboardViewerServer. That would be a handy utility to write! :)

Well, the script works in 10.3.9, but I guess this is where Panther and Tiger differ -- closing the window doesn't quit the process for me.

Thanks for the AppleScript... is there a corresponding "deactivate" command? Obviously not "deactivate", otherwise that would've worked for me when I tried it. :)

This works for me:

tell application "System Events"
if exists process "KeyboardViewerServer" then do shell script "killall KeyboardViewerServer"
end tell

so I have it set up to toggle on and off with two different hot keys

Thanks NovaScotian!

You're very welcome. If you haven't already put this together yourself, here's a toggler - every time it is run from the script menu it will turn the viewer on then off, then on again, etc.

It probably fails in Panther if you close the window with its button (it doesn't respond to Command-w) and the application remains running. Then the first time will quit it, and a second will be required to start it again. I can't test that.

If you try it, let me know.

Here's one more way to find keystrokes for special characters. It's a mousepad.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/store/mmat.php

A client tipped me off about this. I've never seen it for sale anywhere else.

I'm thinking that the whole problem with opening and closing the keyboard viewer directly in its window (must admit that ther little AS works like a charm too) is related to this... Its basically a floating window that shows info. Its not a real application window so the app can't be closed. Guessing that they added a trigger to stop the process in Internationnal so the process statrts and stops wehn you open or close the window...

We're on the same page. Thanks again for the script -- it works as you describe, i.e. properly. :)

Now if you really want it to be slick, you can add a keyboard shortcut to System Prefs > Keyboard & Mouse > Keyboard Shortcut page. Then you wont even have to click in the dock to hide/show it.

I use FastScripts (Red Sweater Software) to give it a key command, so on my machine, Option-Control-Shift-k toggles the Keyboard Viewer on and off.

Also, even though it's a floating window, its presence (or absence) can be tested (in a tell application "System Events" block) with this line: exists (process KeyboardViewerServer)'s window 1 (or if you prefer: exists window 1 of process KeyboardViewerServer). This is true if the window shows, false if not. I can't test it in Panther, though, or I'd think of a way to get the window back if you closed it, but didn't quit the engine.

You would probably tell by finding a way to comunicate to the server, but that's closed source...

Inside secret: the Key Caps.app from Jaguar (10.2.x) works just fine in Panther. Probably therefore works just fine in Tiger, too (no fancy underlying technologies going on there). I forgot to copy it to my new PB so I can't verify Tiger-compatibility until tonight (when I snag it from my WallStreet backup).

I have no idea why Apple decided it was an unnecessary or useless utility.

OS X Keyboard
 

I see your mousepad and raise you a keyboard with all the symbols printed on the keys.
http://www.matias.ca/osxkeyboard/index.php
I've been meaning to buy it for weeks, now.

That would be trumped if each key had a tiny LCD display to show the characters of the currently selected font. Some fonts have unique characters like "" (Option-Shift-K) that aren't present in other fonts.

Very cool, I had no idea this existed. Thanks for sharing.

I upgraded from 9 straight to Panther so that doesn't help me much. But it appears that KeyboardViewerServer is built on KeyCaps, since there are KeyCaps references in the .nib file. I just love poking around.

I find the Character Palette much more useful when I need to find that elusive symbol that isn't supported in the Keyboard Layout.

This prototype ought to get you excited then...
http://www.artlebedev.com/portfolio/optimus/
Website says it could come out this year.

The artwork is beautiful and I'm impressed that they represent a Mac keyboard, but I'm not going to hold my breath for a concept drawing to be available as the real thing by July.

Same Here..

The script adaptation is below.

Now, if we could only figure out how to make it keyboard sensitive so you could let your fingers do the walking and then put the selected character in your clipboard or at the insertion point in a document instead of dragging it there.

Not exactly a keyboard shortcut, but the "Insert with Font" button eliminates the need for drag-n-drop.

Thanks, Mark Hunte, for the Character Palette script. This will also come in very handy.

Most applications will paste the selected character from the Character Palette if you simply double click the character. Some less-smart aps will paste the appropriate character code, but fail to change the font, so selecting the resulting 'garbage character' and changing its font as indicated in Character Palette will fix it.

Hello, I bought my very first Mac this week (the latest iMac).
I'm getting on well with it and slowly getting to grips.

However I have one small problem to do with special characters, in particular the cubed symbol.

I have searched google and came up with the answers posted earlier in this thread (ie: look in the character palette) but the cubed symbol doesn't seem to appear in the character palette either which seems rather strange.

I've looked through the 'Mathematical symbols' and 'Numbers and Number symbols' sections and cannot find cubed anywhere. I can see cubed root and fourth root but not plain old cubed.
Am i looking in the right place? Incidentally I also didn't see squared whilst i was searching. It would seem logical to me that cubed and squared would be somewhere near to cubed squared and fourth squared but it seems not. At the moment I'm having to find an example of cubed on the net and then copy paste it which obviously isn't an ideal situation.

Open the Character Palette, select view "Roman" and in the left pane select "Digits". The second and third from last rows contain a number of options for super and sub scripts including cubed.³

Or you can just cut and paste a cubed symbol from someone else's text.

If you can copy the character from another source, then you can paste it into the search field at the bottom of Character Palette. After a second or two the program will show you where it's located in the palette (which collection).

Screen shot for reference: