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geekhack Community => Keyboards => Topic started by: roaduck on Wed, 23 September 2009, 16:29:48

Title: Typing unusual ascii characters on a keyboard
Post by: roaduck on Wed, 23 September 2009, 16:29:48
Most of you will probably already know how to do keyboard hacks but I usually just cut and paste weird characters if I need them.
I was playing on my new toy - an IBM 1391406 and obviously there is no euro sign € because of it`s age so I looked it up and you can do it by pressing ctr + alt + 4 simultaneously.I also wanted some keyboard hacks using the alt key and the number keypad in Num Lock mode which could be useful for foreign letters and unusual symbols not normally available on standard UK or US keyboards with a single key or double keypress;this might by helpfull for passwords etc.I can see a little black smiley symbol but I can`t copy and paste it.

for example 诧º↓ ♀▼Ö™♠↓

http://www.irongeek.com/alt-numpad-ascii-key-combos-and-chart.html
http://www.zyra.org.uk/kcodes.htm
http://www.edocr.com/doc/59/ascii-cheat-sheet

Here`s some links that might come in useful one day anyway.
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Title: Typing unusual ascii characters on a keyboard
Post by: timw4mail on Wed, 23 September 2009, 16:34:23
One can also type Japanese characters by having the operating system transliterate from romanji to kana or kanji.

For example:
warau (laugh)
わらう (hiragana)
ワラウ (katakana)
笑う (kanji)
Title: Typing unusual ascii characters on a keyboard
Post by: roaduck on Wed, 23 September 2009, 16:48:17
Haha - You are all very knowledgeable on this Forum - I`ve learnt so much in a couple of days - you really do put me to shame.
I can`t see any asian symbols timw4mail because I can`t update windows or install Asian character support as I have no full Windows XP Pro cd.The one I`m using is Tiny XP but I might install a proper version on my new Dell.
Title: Typing unusual ascii characters on a keyboard
Post by: InSanCen on Wed, 23 September 2009, 16:54:57
Back in my Pre-GUI days, I used ALT codes quite extensively. 99% of people had no idea how to access a folder called "Æl*" (ALT+146, ALT+255) for love nor money...

It's fairly popular on a board I am morbidly fascinated by, sort of interesting seeing kids "discover" this all over again.

EDIT:-
wow.. this board takes objection to ALT+255... it should be whitespace, not an asterix... when typing it, it was, but after posting, "hey, I'm an asterix now"
Title: Typing unusual ascii characters on a keyboard
Post by: quadibloc on Wed, 23 September 2009, 19:41:57
Quote from: InSanCen;120136
wow.. this board takes objection to ALT+255...


There are issues transmitting some characters over the Internet by some protocols. But I'm surprised you're giving three-digit ALT codes as examples. The ALT codes in DOS were three digits, but in Windows, they're four digits long... at least IIRC.
Title: Typing unusual ascii characters on a keyboard
Post by: DreymaR on Thu, 24 September 2009, 02:30:49
Hmmm... I think that 3-digit codes are ASCII and 4-digit codes ANSI; there's probably 5-digit Unicode ones as well for all I know.

One way of getting your heart's content of characters is to use a better keyboard layout definition. The one I've made myself lets me type in greek and cyrillic and has a slew of symbols in it. The thing is though, I very rarely actually need any of that.  :)
Title: Typing unusual ascii characters on a keyboard
Post by: Rajagra on Thu, 24 September 2009, 09:48:46
There are three variations in Windows (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/goglobal/bb964658.aspx):



This is a handy page (http://www.fileformat.info/tip/microsoft/enter_unicode.htm). I had to do the registry change to get the third method to work:
Quote
Under HKEY_Current_User/Control Panel/Input Method, set EnableHexNumpad to "1". If you have to add it, set the type to be REG_SZ.
Title: Typing unusual ascii characters on a keyboard
Post by: cmr on Thu, 24 September 2009, 14:31:57
this*sentence*contains*several*non-breaking*spaces*but*no*asterisks*and*no*regular*spaces
Title: Typing unusual ascii characters on a keyboard
Post by: lowpoly on Thu, 24 September 2009, 15:20:13
Quote from: cmr;120319
this*sentence*contains*several*non-breaking*spaces*but*no*asterisks*and*no*regular*spaces


You mean,  before you clicked "submit reply"?
Title: Typing unusual ascii characters on a keyboard
Post by: InSanCen on Thu, 24 September 2009, 16:40:40
Quote from: lowpoly;120342
You mean,  before you clicked "submit reply"?

LMFAO... deja vu!

Most 3 digit ALT codes I've tried have worked perfectly, so I just stick with what I have memorised from waaaay back when.
Title: Typing unusual ascii characters on a keyboard
Post by: cmr on Thu, 24 September 2009, 16:53:52
yeah it ate my nbsp's
Title: Typing unusual ascii characters on a keyboard
Post by: timw4mail on Thu, 24 September 2009, 21:17:56
 
Title: Typing unusual ascii characters on a keyboard
Post by: Rajagra on Mon, 28 September 2009, 01:41:58
I just stumbled across a large font that includes many (60000+) Unicode characters:
http://www.code2000.net/code2000_page.htm

As an aside, can you see this?: ⌨
(Unicode character U+2328 should show a keyboard.)
Title: Typing unusual ascii characters on a keyboard
Post by: rdh on Mon, 28 September 2009, 01:54:46
Quote from: Rajagra;121084

As an aside, can you see this?: ⌨
(Unicode character U+2328 should show a keyboard.)


Did you have those in your signature block before?
Title: Typing unusual ascii characters on a keyboard
Post by: Rajagra on Mon, 28 September 2009, 01:58:10
Quote from: rdh;121085
Did you have those in your signature block before?


No, I added them a few minutes ago. :smile:
Title: Typing unusual ascii characters on a keyboard
Post by: sixty on Mon, 28 September 2009, 02:27:10
This might be worth a further read if you find yourself unable to use the methods described above: http://geekhack.org/showwiki.php?title=Island:6729