OT: A non-ASCII characters text file

[Alf P. Steinbach]

Someone (I don't recall who) in a recent thread complained about US
keyboards lacking e.g. British pound signs.

I have a Norwegian keyboard, which lacks Norwegian quote signs, and many
other symbols I use.

At first I just copied these symbols from the web, or specified them
numerically. Then I started on a keyboard helper thing in C++, for
Windows. But in the end I just put the most used symbols in a text file,
which I switch to whenever I need a symbol.

The text file is not super-convenient, in fact it often conflicts with
other use of the clipboard. But it works. A semi-practical solution.

Herewith, the current version:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
«»
“” ❝❞
『』
– — ’ •
… ⋯ ⋮ * † ‡
← ↑ → ↓ ↔ ↕ ↖ ↗ ↘ ↙ ◁ ▷ ◂ ◀ ▶ ▸ ⍅ ⍆ ➲
© ® ™ ° ′ ″ µ
− × ⋅ ÷ Σ π √ ≤ ≥ ≈ ∪ ∩ ± ⌈⌉ 𝜋
⇐ ⇔ ⇒ ≡ ¬
☺ ☻ 😃 😒 ⚡
1ˢᵗ, 2ⁿᵈ, 3ʳᵈ, 4ᵗʰ, 6ᵗᵉ
Super xᵃ xᵇ xᶜ xᵈ xᵉ xᶠ xᵍ xʰ xⁱ xʲ xᵏ xˡ xᵐ xⁿ xᵒ xᵖ xʳ xˢ xᵗ xᵘ xᵛ xʷ
xˣ xʸ xᶻ
Super x⁰ x¹ x² x³ x⁴ x⁵ x⁶ x⁷ x⁸ x⁹ x’ x⁺ x⁻ x⁼ x⁽ x⁾
Sub x₀ x₁ x₂ x₃ x₄ x₅ x₆ x₇ x₈ x₉ xᵢ
½ ¼ ¾

Soft hyphen ­
Non-breakable space [ ]
Non-breakable hyphen [‑]

news: 📰
movie: 🎥
music: 🎵
angry: 😠
propaganda: 🐷
idioti: 懵
question: ❓
exclamation: ❗️

/‾‾ File ‾‾\
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

- Alf (off-topic writer's mode)

[David Brown]

On 27/03/2020 16:09, Alf P. Steinbach wrote:
> Someone (I don't recall who) in a recent thread complained about US
> keyboards lacking e.g. British pound signs.

I guess you might mean me - but I wasn't complaining about it, I was
merely surprised that the standard US keyboard layout doesn't have at
least ¤ and §.

>
> I have a Norwegian keyboard, which lacks Norwegian quote signs, and many
> other symbols I use.

You mean « and » ? They have kind of gone out of fashion in modern
Norwegian, but perhaps that's just laziness of the modern generation
using keyboards without the symbols.

>
> At first I just copied these symbols from the web, or specified them
> numerically. Then I started on a keyboard helper thing in C++, for
> Windows. But in the end I just put the most used symbols in a text file,
> which I switch to whenever I need a symbol.

I recommend switching to Linux. For me, these are AltGr + z and AltGr +
x. Many of the more useful (to me) symbols you have on the list are
available as AltGr combinations, and a fair number of the others are
available with the Compose key.

A good word processor will handle quotation marks automatically, as will
LaTeX (with the right setup and packages).

A lot of the symbols in your list are only likely to be useful in
documents written with a word processor, LaTeX, HTML, markdown, etc.

[Cholo Lennon]

On 27/3/20 12:09, Alf P. Steinbach wrote:
> Someone (I don't recall who) in a recent thread complained about US
> keyboards lacking e.g. British pound signs.
>
> I have a Norwegian keyboard, which lacks Norwegian quote signs, and many
> other symbols I use.
>
> At first I just copied these symbols from the web, or specified them
> numerically. Then I started on a keyboard helper thing in C++, for
> Windows. But in the end I just put the most used symbols in a text file,
> which I switch to whenever I need a symbol.

That remember me a TSR (terminate and stay resident) Turbo C program for
MS-DOS that I developed for my father back in 1990, in order to provide
him some Spanish symbols in his US keyboard. Spanish keyboards were not
available at that time, luckily that has changed. Fond memories :-D


--
Cholo Lennon
Bs.As.
ARG