You kid, but as an Canadian Anglophone, this is what I do any time I have to send an email to someone with a French name with an accented character.
Yes, I know the special character menu is a thing, but I have shit to do.
Try this instead if you have a number pad on your keyboard:
Hold alt and type 0233 and then release the alt key.
For my favourite, type : then hold alt and type 0254. 😛
I have not had a number pad on my keyboard for some time :( I remember this arcane magic
I believe you can do this with the on-screen keyboard! If you're using Windows, I think that can be accessed with super+u (but I haven't used Windows in a long time so I apologize if I misremembered or if this is no longer accurate).
Or better yet, start using the US-international keyboard layout. You press the accent you want (', `, ", ~, ...) and the letter you want it on, and boom. Writing normal versions of those symbols requires a space after writing them, but that's easy to get used to.
It's pretty much the default setting in the Netherlands.
I use US International with no dead keys, so ` ' and ~ all work normally, but you can do right-alt (alt gr) + a to make à and so on.
I tried this for a bit, until I came into work hungover one Monday and for the life of me couldn't figure out why my password wasn't working.
(May have been the Canadian multilingual layout, I don't remember)
I remember this from working on a DOS PC with a German keyboard. Which has no backslash character, among other characters one need for programming. Having äöü at your fingertips is no help if you need [].
Most modern OSs have special bindings for special characters. On a Mac it's like alt+ e e for é. I think it's just alt + e on Linux.
Don’t you guys have dead keys? On German keyboards there’s a key that does nothing on its own. When you press it twice, you get '`', and when you press that button and 'e' you get è.
Many people confuse this for the apostrophe which brings me into a murderous rage every time I see it.
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We (Canadians) actually have two layouts to type French characters. The modern Canadian multilingual layout, and the traditional "French (Canada)" layout. As an older French speaking Canadian, I prefer the traditional layout but both work. You can even type English words with these.
It's always some bitch named Hélênè.
(This was accomplished by searching, in no particular order, 'e accent aigu', 'Pokemon wikipedia', and 'e with pointy hat')
H̴̢̰̙̬͆́́̊̑́̽͐̐é̸͓̼̋́̍ͅľ̵̨̛̲̠͎̠̮̮̙̠͕̖̖̥̰͚́̈͌͒̆̈̆ê̶̘̘̘̮̙̪̦̹̟̩̂̋̀̊̊̈́̐̍̈́͗̒̃̽͐̕n̷͍̺̻̱̰̳̦͒̊͂̄̽͑̍̃̂͗͆͘͜è̴̦͚̮͎̖̖̩̻͉͋̀̌̅̒̇͌ is such a b̴e̷a̸u̴t̷i̴f̵u̷l̴ n̵̡̢̡̨̨̢̡̧̡̧̧̨̢̨̧̨̢̧̨̡̨̧̢̛̗̗̻̬͈̗̖͈̙̫̠͕̥̲̲̙͕͕̣̞͉̦̙̗̻̥̝̼̬͉͚̮͖̻̘͉͕̜̟̗̫̣̰͎̩͚̼̤͉͇̟̙͍͕̤̩͙̳̥̗͚̼̱͓̝̱̗̬̜̳̳̼̬͎̥̺̞̦͔̘̤̟̼̻̲͕̳̤̯̙̤̗͕̼̰͇̙̟̖̪̱̝͖̭̺̼̫̣̳̮̺̦͇̝̯̠̟̼̫̘̫͔̤̗͕̖̟̲̳͓̼̖̘̦̩̟̹̹̝̻̮̯̗̜͇̳̯͇̥͙͔̝̠̞̱̲̭̲̥̳̻̲͙̙̘͚̳̬̱͔̫̩̠͙͎͇̟͕̠͍̠̠̮̭̱̗͇͓̥̪̥͓͉͚͓͍̱̝̦̯̹̠͙̩̖̜̘̞̻̟͙̗͉̙̮̻̦̱̪͚̠͉̙̱͍̘͉͎͙̺̯͔̖̿͌̋͒̔̄̍̽̀̏͂̀̀̅̊́͂̈̐̓́̀̂̈́̈́̓͑̎̒͆̀͑͒̎̈̂̈̊̈̏̎́́͋͋̀̉̊̈́́̑̓̓̉̂̌̾̓̂̐̾̈́̊́̿̀́̇̂͂̀̐̆̆̽̂̍̎̔͊͗̓̏͂̄̿͑̽͑̃̈́̄̾͂͗̋́͋͘͘̚̕̕͘͜͜͜͜͜͜͝͝͝͠͠͝͝ͅͅͅͅͅͅͅͅͅą̵̢̡̡̨̧̢̧̧̡̨̛̛͎̪̣̜̣̘̻͙͈͈̥̘͚̼̗̩̮̠̜͉͎͍͍̝̭̹̞̜̰̦̣̙̟̟̩̮͙͖̥͓͔̝͙͍̟̠͙̮͎̹̳͖̰̪̼̙̻͓͔͍̭̞̟̯̤̩̲͈͇̳̝͔̩̮̣̠̥̖̺͕̟̩̣͖͍͇̠͖̏̿̊͊̀̄̈́̓́͗̌͋̈́̓̔̃̄͘͜͜͜m̴̛̙͚̭̪̼̯̝͇̞̹̼̫͉̬̖̩̥͓̏̎̅̇̂̄̀̓̌̂͋̓̏̋̊̑̒̊͒̂͛́̒͋̄͋͑̋͛͋͛̒̊͒́̀̄̀̓̊̀̌̉̑̎̽͂͋̍̓̿̊͗̌̋̍̄͌͑̀̿͂̌̾̓̀͋̊̋̃́̊́̃̃͐̄̀̅̌͌́̓̈́̄͋̂͂̆̈͌̀̈́̎̋̐͌͂̈́̑̉̑̎̽̎͛̑̏͛̌̄̈́̄̐̿̇̎̾̇̓̍̄͒̓͛̆̍̔̾͗̾̀̊̐̂͆͂̏̾́̃́͒̒̈́̃̄̏͂̄̊̋͑̀̒̐͗́̾̈́̿̏͆͗̓̏́̏͂͒̿͊̚̕̕͘̕̚̚̕̚̚͘͘̚͘̚̕͠͠͝͠͝͠͝͝e̵̡̡̢̨̨̡̢̨̢̨̧̡̢̡̢̢̨̢̢̧̨̨̯͔̻͚͚̥̠̗͍̫̩̞̮̣̫̹̙̰͔̙̭̲̻̭̦̫̹͖̥͎͖̳͎̠̥̙̗̖̖̳̫̖͇̲̗̥͖̙̜͓̺͖̥͎̗̟̹͖͖̖͙̞̥͓̦̙͍̬̣̫̹͔̣̻̭̘͈͍͚̲̝̹̠͕̣̪̜̘̝̞͔͙̺̯̘̹̩̳̳̮͖̣͕͔̟̬͈̻̥͚̟̰͍͈̻͙̦͙͉͔͔̣̟̬̤̞̭͖̰̣̦͔̫̥̣̪͎̺͓̲̠̬̣̘̗̠͎̩͎͇̥͔̫̖̦̭͓̙̦̪̫̼̲̲̩̫̪̟͈̥̙̞͎͕̮̗̻̙̱̲͓̜̪̺̰͓̲͉̘͔̝͇͈̰̹̤̤͓̪̰̺̝͉̺̠̠̹͈͉̠͙͌͊̈́̓͋̔̓͗̔̀͊͗̈́̅̒̌̎̔̓̅̇̈͋͐̒̈́̃̓̀̄̂̈́̾̃͘͘̚̕͜͜͜͜͜͜͝͠͠͝ͅͅ
Also
Recommend text replacement software if ever a name/word comes up frequently :)
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I work in IT and I have coworkers that use caps lock to capitalize single letters, like the beginning of a sentence. It hurts a bit every time I see it.
I work in IT and I have coworkers that call the emergency support line on Saturday at 7 in the morning because "this bullshit system won't let me log in", then I remote in and it says in big letters right at the center of the login screen CAPSLOCK ENABLED.
I won't complain though, that way I make an extra 50€ (1h minimum billing time with weekend bonus) in under a minute.
I think this kind of thing is inevitable due to change blindness. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change_blindness
You don't get hit with the change blindness because A: you're looking at the situation with fresh eyes instead of sleep deprived pre-coffee eyes that just want to get through the login screen to get some work done
And B, because you know how to interpret every bit of visual information on the screen and thus think of it as important. I mean, think of all the times you looked at someone else's computer and their desktop background was their kid or their dog. That's a huge change in visual terms, but it's a tiny change in terms of importance, so you dismiss it and get used to it immediately. You file it as unimportant and ignore it. Your filing of stuff is correct because you actually understand it. But an average user will file every single thing they don't understand as important, and also many things they do understand but don't care about.
Disk mount error. Resolution not recommended. Are you experiencing interruptions? Find out why! Buy boner pills now! It looks like you're trying to write a word document, would you like help? It's a sunny day, 22 degrees C. USERS APPDATA ROAMING. Janice from accounting wants to show you her baby pictures. Back up your files to OneDrive now. You're overdue for an antivirus scan. This flash drive may be corrupted, would you like to repair it? The program crashed, reporting the problem to Microsoft. Solitaire. A Nigerian prince needs your money. Please verify your phone number.
These messages all have varying levels of importance, but they all demand the user's attention in a way most people can't tell apart. The user is a bald monkey relying on stimulus-sorting firmware that's hundreds of thousands of years out of date. So the occipital lobe just files every one of those messages under the same label: noise.
Reminds me of the bash.org quote that went something like:
User1 joins channel
User1: HELLO EVERYONE!
Mod: Try hitting the caps lock key
User1: OMG THANK YOU THAT'S SO MUCH EASIER!!!
Mod: We need you to press the caps lock key again.
User1: OKAY I DID! JUST TO BE SURE, I PRESSED IT TWICE.
Yes, but you need to be wary of pasting the formatting.
So when you do this, instead of pasting with Control+V you will want to paste without formatting using the Control+Shift+V command.
So remember - if you want that capital 'H' without issues, use your Shift key when pasting what you copy from Wikipedia.
Missing some vital first steps :
Screenshot the webpage. Print it out. Scan the text using OCR. Cut single character.
You can copy the H and paste it into the address bar and copy again to clear the formatting.
First you copy, then open word pad and paste it there. Then remember that word pad has text formatting and open excel and paste it there. Then remember excel also has text formatting and open calculator and paste it there. Then remember that calculator can only handle numbers (or a few letters if you are a hacker and put it in hex mode) and open Minesweeper and try to set a new personal best time. Don't you just hate it when you have one mine left and two squares with equal chance of being the mine?
Eventually remember the pasting thing, act impressed the computer still remembers what you were trying to paste and just paste it into your notepad document and hope no one notices it's different.
MS getting rid of word pad really messes up my usual work flow. Or would if I wasn't switching to Linux instead of W11. I hear the word pads grow on trees there and that it comes with sudoku built right in, but they are fancy and drop the "ku" to save typing time.
Well notepad still exists. Even though that's not my normal text editor (I use Visual Studio Code) I use notepad for simple text manipulation frequently.
Yeah the joke was none of the first paragraph was helpful or necessary and wordpad doesn't need to be a part of the flow. And that notepad only handles text, so you don't have to worry about the formatting being pasted anyways.
Notepad is my goto for files that I'm not sure what type they are and I want to check if it's text-based.
I just paste it in notepad to remove formatting.
And I'm not even joking, sometimes the special ALT 0227 doesnt work and my å is only on Wikipedia...
Dammnnn I use right click page without formatting so much, I hate it when software removes the option from the right click menu... looking at you Teams. This will change my life!
It works in m$ office apps, but not across Windows; if I open gmail and paste formatted text from the clipboard it still retains the formatting rather then pasting as plain text. I just use notepad++ or notepad anyway. Who has time for M$ word/excel bloatware?
Another cool tip is Windows + V to bring up clipboard history (past 25 copy selected text or images to your clipboard). Also the Window + Shift + S for built in screenshot tool.
I used to do this, but then I changed to Hat. It's increased my productivity significantly and saves me multiple hours each week.
do you mind sharing your secret for the capital i? you just used three of them in one post and i have no idea how you accomplished such a feat
I go to Infrastructure. I hope to find a shorter word in the future but so far I've got nothing.
It's the same thing, but you go to the Wikipedia article for Æthelred I of Wessex and copy his Roman numeral.
Bro I can do you one better than that and it even works without internet after the first time if you work from home!
Open a file and copy the capitals (Ass for A, Bumbulum for B, etc.) from Wikipedia and boom! You add some html around it, go to godaddy or your favorite registrar and claim a domain (I like the expensive ones), manage nameserver and dynamic DNS with cloud flare so can access your home router without getting a static IP from your ISP, then use nginx to set up a reverse proxy (don't forget to forward unique ports on your router in the NAT rules section!), spool a virtual machine and use your router to create a static lease, stick that file on that machine, and then make yourself a browser bookmark to the URL you purchased that hits your router port forwards to reverse proxy and lands you in that VM on a shared drive! The best part is you can often do this for less than $1000 per month depending on the URL you pick.
Oh, be sure to set up some 2FA though if you don't want to get hacked.
So just make a text replacement. I actually prefer it this way so I can always get the character I want. I have it set up such that
\emdash and \endash are replaced by the appropriate characters. I’ve also recently gotten into \hairsp\emdash\hairsp for all my em dash needs.
I also set up my phone to replace a ? and ! directly next to each other in both orders with a ‽
It’s great fun if you care about minute details such as these
Yes, I know. I was A) demonstrating what I was talking about, and B) seeing if it would work here (it doesn't).
Just take a picture of the Wikipedia page and use OCR. No need for that copy and pasting nonsense.
Modifier key
Use auto hotkey and set up so that super + {letter} gives you the uppercase letter
Set a key as a modifier key and program the character provider function in your text editor to to give the corresponding capital letter of whatever key is pressed, in case the modifier key is down.
Even better, you can use the same modifier key with number keys and other symbol keys to give an alternative symbol, which you could also indicate on the keyboard.
Let's call this the Shif... oh wait, what year is this?
On desktop, how many people search for an emoji, then just copy paste the character into their text?
Instead of switching to the alt keyboard, not that one, the other, no the emoji not the international one, dammit.
Or bringing up the keyboard menu, then scrolling around, looking for the right one, searching, no, scroll, scroll scroll, etc.
I do this when writing λ, Δ, Φ, etc. in a document on a computer I don't own or when on my phone. It's genuinely faster than scrolling through Word's symbol list, for example.
Not all of us are able to use superior tools like LaTeX for our documents, unfortunately
Good to know. Been learning some LaTeX from a friend recently, so I'll have to try this out.
You mean L^A^TEX?
(Btw for the uninitiated: The x is a chi, pronounced as in Koine/Modern Greek, like in British "hue", first make sure it's a "hj" and then squeeze it even tighter. At least according to Knuth it's a chi, that is.)
Used to work with someone who would recycle characters. Like, instead of typing a letter on the keyboard (which had many keys specifically for this purpose), they would go looking for that letter in some text they were going to discard and Ctrl-X Ctrl-V it.
Honestly shit like that works really well when half of your notebook's keyboard doesn't work anymore. The on screen keyboard is limited and copy pasting letters from texts can be faster. Especially with special characters. Or when you just need an a or s, opening the on screen keyboard again and again vs copy pasting it once and using it as a source - the second one is faster.
I am very sad and desperate I can't afford a new laptop
What's the model? I know a decent bit about laptop repair and I can do some research for you to see whether it would be a massive pain to replace the keyboard.
That's super nice of you. I think it is an HP 250 G7 (that's on the back), I bought it back in like 2017. I'm not very tech savvy and just bought the one a fellow student had and said she liked. It drives me nuts because I don't get how to turn it on or off (I mean I do, but it changes what it wants all the time, you gotta rub it the right way).
Just looked into it a bit and although the part is pretty cheap it's a bit of a tricky repair. If you had 50 dollars lying around and wanted something better than an external keyboard you could just do the whole top case (part that all the internals go into which contains the keyboard and trackpad). Still requires taking apart the computer completely, but if you (or a friend) are feeling adventurous it's not a bad route.
Can you send me a link to what I would need to buy? Maybe I'll find someone in a repair cafe who is willing to do that. Thanks!
https://www.ebay.com/itm/163904761816. They also have it on Amazon and probably a few other sites.
Quick question: how do I figure out if the malfunction is really caused by the physical keyboard and not some soft/hardware issue that has nothing to do with the keys themselves?
Unless there's liquid damage and it's certain rows of keys not working at all it's unlikely that you'd have that sort of partial failure of your keyboard. Even in that case it's still usually the keyboard. If certain keys only work with excess pressure that's pretty much 100% a hardware failure of the keyboard itself.
You joke but Google is the easiest way to get the Euro symbol on a UK keyboard.
Kicking the ass of the British is just repetitive and boring at this point. We've already done that twice. We've only defeated the French once, and I'm sure they'll put up more of a fight, when we tell them they have to speak American.
/s
Isn't that just AltGr+4? A lot of UK keyboards write € on the 4 keycap next to the $.
You sure you're not thinking of the Pound symbol (£)? The Euro symbol (€) would have to be a third thing, if it's there at all.
I'm not British and don't know their keyboard layout, so maybe you're right, but I would expect £ to be accessible and € less so.
Edit: oh, you were right. £ is Shift+3, € is AltGr+4.
Just looking at a random selection of two laptops and five keyboards here and they all have the 4 $ € key marked. The only keyboard I can find that doesn't is the Windows On-Screen Keyboard.
Although looking at laptops on shop websites, a lot of them have just 4 $ so maybe that is going out of fashion? Samsung yes, Asus no, Dell no, HP no.
Actually the Windows On-Screen Keyboard does show € but only after you press Alt-Gr...
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ABNT2 keyboard gang here, we just press ´+e. It even has a dedicated key for ç, French words do not scare us.
standard keyboard
That's easy: Alt+130
But for a tenkeyless one, that's what Wikipedia highlighting is for.
Ctrl-period or Ctrl-comma. Granted, you have to search with your eyes for the correct one, but they are in alphabetical order.
There's something a bit upsetting about how finding it online is faster and easier than using an application purpose-built for this purpose (Character Map)
That application was made before the turn of the fucking millennium and it has a bad UI design?
I know, right?
For real though, Linux Mint comes with what seems to be a clone of it, name included, and I'm pretty sure I've seen other clones of it integrated into writing software. There have been plenty of opportunities to improve on the formula, and the experience is improved slightly, it's just not enough.
Edit: turns out the one in Mint is GNOME Character Map.
It's even worse on mobile. I have no idea how to do this without changing my phone's whole locale.
I'm not sure about your specific setup, but usually on mobiles you can hold your finger on a letter to see variants/accent marks.
It depends on the keyboard. I've used some in the past that tied that feature to the current language
I actually find it a lot easier on mobile, because you can see all the symbols available to type without having to memorise them or have 2-4 different characters printed on each key. Gboard has almost every special character I ever need to use accessible in its two extra screens, and accented letters like êëéèē accessible by long-pressing the base letter.
Unexpected Keyboard (on F-Droid) is also fantastic for extra characters, give it a try, but I don't use it as a daily driver because of lack of spellcheck and glide typing.
Sigh, it used to be a good piece of software...before Microsoft bought it. I'm not a fan of gboard though. I want something that is very customizable.
I moved away from Swiftkey for the same reason and currently I'm pretty happy with what Heliboard has to offer. You can download it from F-Droid.
Samsung Keyboard literally lets you design your own keyboard layout in a surprisingly robust and rich way. I don't know if it's available on non-Samsung phones though, and I can't wholeheartedly recommend it because it has a bunch of flaws and quirks. For example, every once in a while it seems to do select all + copy + paste, without you going anything besides typing normally. This can scroll the text to an inconvenient place, and remove special formatting. On YouTube if you're replying to a comment it destroys the username you're replying to, replacing the special highlight with just their name in plain text.
If you got compose key (linux, mac, windows with third party software), then those are trivial:
ë ñ ũ ü, and even åâăāãȧaąàáæª₂2²
Goes like Compose e ", Compose n ~, etc
But a thing to note that resulting letters are generic and not region-specific,
like that ë (U+00EB LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH DIAERESIS)
is not the same as ё (U+0451 CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER IO)
Which might trigger spellcheckers or not even be displayed in certain fonts
There's also apparently some weird combos like Compose+:) for ☺ and Compose+CCCP for ☭, but no easily available keys for greek letters unless you tweak configs...
Thanks for the advice, but it's not important enough for me to do it.
I barely use any of these letters anyway.
when I was younger, instead of just using shift, i used to press the caps lock key and then turn it off lol
Psst, check out my reply to the parent comment :) your wife might be right, though I'm firmly on your side
I have it on good authority that Sean Wrona, possibly the fastest typist in the world, does this too. When you really think about it, there's nothing wrong with doing it that way, but I agree that it feels wrong and weird.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=m9EXEpjSDEw this is what his typing looks like in action (though no clear shot of him using shift or caps lock as far as I can see)
https://data.typeracer.com/pit/profile?user=arenasnow his profile on a competitive typing website.
Edit: found a quote from his website:
I recommend using caps lock instead of shift to type capital letters to allow more flexibility in the hand that you would normally use shift with.
Didn't we all. Tiny me's fingers were not long enough to hold shift and click another key at the same item.
Presumably the original post was made facetiously, but since a lot of people are talking about special characters in the comments:
I can't confirm anymore, but besides all the alt shortcuts in the comments, in Windows it used to be that you could open the Character Map from the Start menu, then either copy any character from a chart or select the character to see its alt code.
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as someone who types special characters a lot, I can't believe how people go about without the compose key
I feel like I saw one of those a very very long time ago, but otherwise, never heard of one. Thank you for the edification!
Interesting. I only type in English so I wouldn't have a use for it. I just use Dvorak and remap Caps lock to Compose
One of the great tricks is also [Super] + [.] to bring up a mixed emoji and emoticon library!
There have been enough times that I've stated something obvious and been declared mistaken by the original poster that I've learned to hedge my bets. Also, if I pretend to be ignorant of some obvious things, it can be funnier.
If you'd prefer it to be framed another way, I'm a coward.
This is what I used once when my keyboard broke and some keys stopped working. Even ordering the new keyboard was difficult when I couldn't type my delivery address properly.
Back in my day we didn't have no fancy on screen keyboard built into windows! We copy and pasted from a random readme.txt file when our keyboards broke! (Or were taken away by our parents thinking it would make the computer inoperable, haha)
It is a really nice feature now though.
How do you think Mexican people spell year in Spanish if it's not by going to Wikipedia and getting that letter that comes after m and before n in the Mexican alphabet? Eh? Eh? Anios!
Cuantos anos tienes?
Solamente tengo un ano! Y con ese ano me cago. LOL.
Big difference between ano and anio.
Yo tener mucho demasiados buenos anos en frente para pasarme vida en fábrica cigaros.
Peggy Hill no es cumpablo.
Oh my god! I'm going to jail!