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How to type special characters on your keyboard

LaRedaction Posted messages 850 Registration date   Status Administrator Last intervention   -  
brucine Posted messages 24931 Registration date   Status Member Last intervention   -
swisshippo
Did you know that your computer keyboard offers you much more than just the letters of the alphabet and numbers? In fact, it is possible to enter a multitude of special characters, symbols, and emojis on PC or Mac, whether directly with your keyboard or by using codes. For example, you can easily obtain accented uppercase letters or type emojis or specific symbols like the yen or the won. However, it is important to keep in mind that not all characters will necessarily be displayed the same way on all devices. So, do you often use special characters in your texts? Or perhaps you have tips for easily remembering them?
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  1.
    luckydu43 Posted messages 4497 Registration date   Status Member Last intervention   1 177
     

    Hello,

    I can no longer do without the fr-oss layout under Windows (link), also known as "French (variant)" in the keyboard layouts for Linux-based distributions.

    It complements the classic AZERTY layout naturally and avoids the learning curve required by the BEPO layout or the ALT+xxx shortcuts.

    The MAMAA may not have oil, but they have data!
    Do you feel my Big Data?
    Sacrifice a few freedoms for more security and you lose them ALL.
    ALL YOUR DATABASE ARE BELONG TO US

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    1. brucine Posted messages 24931 Registration date   Status Member Last intervention   4 179
       

      Hello,

      Yes, well...

      Instead of typing ALT Tartempion, you'll have to remember what each key corresponds to via AltGr or CTRL.

      Not sure that political considerations belong on this link; I'm not discussing their meaning, but they should have linked to a neutral site on the same topic.

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      1. luckydu43 Posted messages 4497 Registration date   Status Member Last intervention   1 177 > brucine Posted messages 24931 Registration date   Status Member Last intervention  
         

        The "political considerations" that are not really such aim solely to justify a feature added to the layout. There is 90% of the page dedicated to the layout itself, it is very detailed and it is the official page; any other link is an incomplete repost.

        In use? I just typed À with Shift + à.

        Type 0 instead with Shift.

        œ? AltGr + o

        ≤? AltGr + <

        As a general rule, I don't use Ctrl.

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      2. brucine Posted messages 24931 Registration date   Status Member Last intervention   4 179 > luckydu43 Posted messages 4497 Registration date   Status Member Last intervention  
         

        Oh really?

        There is no universal solution.

        Suppose I have a scientific article, I use units or Greek function symbols, specific symbols (the ångström is simple, but Feynman notation?), a bibliography referring to Czech, Polish, or Hungarian authors whose spelling I must respect?

        Without taking such an example, it is quite rare to have to use a multitude of diacritical characters in a text of different linguistic origin.

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      3. luckydu43 Posted messages 4497 Registration date   Status Member Last intervention   1 177 > brucine Posted messages 24931 Registration date   Status Member Last intervention  
         

        "Oh really?" ... yes my bad I ignored that banner, I thought you were only referring to the last paragraph on inclusive writing --' I better understand your point ':-)

        "There is no universal solution." certainly. The character map will always be more complete than a keyboard, even with 10 actions available per key aside from considerations of ease of use.

        My proposal is one from a French speaker for the use of French speakers and/or some Europeans; not being suitable for the usages of certain Eastern countries, another layout will be needed. Since it’s not my usage, I don’t have one in mind that unifies French and Polish for example.

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      4. brucine Posted messages 24931 Registration date   Status Member Last intervention   4 179 > luckydu43 Posted messages 4497 Registration date   Status Member Last intervention  
         

        I illustrated in perhaps an exaggerated example that the problem exists even for French speakers, to a lesser extent for scientific publications which are now supposed to be entirely in English, and where at least there will be no accents except in bibliographic names, but certainly for a thesis, a dissertation or an article from a company that, apart from the bibliography which may not exist in the last case, will have no choice but to use a certain number of characters that exceed the keyboard if the subject is technical and where it seems difficult to switch from French to Greek and vice versa, which by the way would only solve part of the problem.

        It's not just "hard sciences", I once saw an article in the social sciences raising this issue concerning writing characters from I don’t remember which ancient dead language.

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