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: