How to Add/Insert/Type Special Characters

[CinnamonTrees]

Hey Ossicone, I've got a bit of an update for you.

For Mac users, beginning with OS X 10.9, you can access the Character Viewer by pressing Command-Control-Space from any application. By default, this will be an Emoji viewer, but if you click the button in the upper right corner (looks like a tiny window with an asterisk in it), it'll switch to the expanded character viewer. From there you can access all of your phonetic symbols (as well as things like arrows, non-latin characters, etc.)

[ZedSed]

For anyone who likes working on their smartphones, I recommend this. It's a customizable keyboard app called MessagEase. It's free, and I think it's pretty awesome. I have a full IPA keyboard (minus diacritics) which I set up for myself, but you can set it up any way you like.


http://www.exideas.com/ME/index.php

[Sasquatch]

I'm searching for how to do this with Linux. It looks, in principle, like I should be able to tweak a file and get each key to type the desired IPA symbol when I hold the correct button. So my "windows" button could be the IPA button. But I'm having difficulty finding the exact information I need. It looks like an X11 issue. But every distro is slightly different.

[gach]

It is an X11 thing. It's also something I haven't tried myself. Quick search gives short instructions like this one or this Ubuntu specific one. In short, the folder containing the layout files and where you want to add your new edited layout is going to be /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/ or /etc/X11/xkb/symbols/ or some such. Unfortunately it will be a very hands on job editing the layouts. I'm not aware that anyone would have done a user friendly keyboard editor for Linux.

As I said, I haven't had a need to edit keyboard layouts myself. I dislike using IPA or any other tight phonetic notation for longer texts and have been content using the compose key. The advantage with it is that you don't have to worry about messing up the layout files while editing.

[gestaltist]

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ComposeKey

This might be useful for Linux users.

[Prinsessa]

Hey Ossicone, I've got a bit of an update for you.

For Mac users, beginning with OS X 10.9, you can access the Character Viewer by pressing Command-Control-Space from any application. By default, this will be an Emoji viewer, but if you click the button in the upper right corner (looks like a tiny window with an asterisk in it), it'll switch to the expanded character viewer. From there you can access all of your phonetic symbols (as well as things like arrows, non-latin characters, etc.)

Heh. I've never noticed the buttons at the bottom until now. I've been stuck under the tab with the clock icon on it, which works very well for me.

One can start typing as soon as the dialogue pops up, either similar characters or the name of the character, to filter the list, and one can use arrow keys to make one's selection and hit enter to confirm, to work faster.

One's last used symbol always gets pushed to the front of the list under the clock tab, so commonly used glyphs won't have to be searched for.

It's a neat little box and I use it a lot!

Also neat is the Unicode hex input keyboard layout that can be added, which works just like alt codes on Windows. I use this when I quickly want to add combining diacritics and the like (especially when describing things abstractly with C for consonants and V for vowels and may want to put an accent mark or a tilde on the V). I've remembered the few codes I use the most, but when I do forget, I can always go to the Wikipedia page for the diacritic in question to see their listing of hex codes and find the one corresponding to the combining version.

I can't do this on my phone, but I've found and bookmarked this great page where I can search for the name of a combining diacritic and click the copy link, which takes me to a page with the combining character alone in a textfield, which I can select and copy, and then pasting it after, say, V, it combines with it just like it should.

[gach]

Also neat is the Unicode hex input keyboard layout that can be added, which works just like alt codes on Windows. I use this when I quickly want to add combining diacritics and the like (especially when describing things abstractly with C for consonants and V for vowels and may want to put an accent mark or a tilde on the V). I've remembered the few codes I use the most, but when I do forget, I can always go to the Wikipedia page for the diacritic in question to see their listing of hex codes and find the one corresponding to the combining version.

I could also bring up the section Unicode and alt codes under the Ubuntu help page I linked or the corresponding Wikipedia entry since they describes how Unicode hex input works under Linux (or X11 rather). First press Ctrl+Shift+u which outputs an underlined u. Type the Unidoce hex value and press enter to turn this input into the intended Unicode character. Ctrl+Shift+u 021b for example will output ț. Searching and typing hex values is not the most practical input method but works well for just the type of use you describe where you can memorise a few sparsely recurring special characters.

[Prinsessa]

I tend to store a lot of my commonly used characters in a text file to copy from anyway. I have such files on computer, tablet and phone alike.

[J_from_Holland]

Is there a How to Add/Insert/Type Special Characters for Mac Users too?
For example, how do you type a schwa?

[Egerius]

Is there a How to Add/Insert/Type Special Characters for Mac Users too?
For example, how do you type a schwa?

I. Click where you want the glyph to appear on the document/in the window.
II. Double-click the symbol you want to insert.
That's it.

[Sasquatch]

...I'm not aware that anyone would have done a user friendly keyboard editor for Linux....

Thanks for the info and the links. This has become my project for this weekend. I'll be sure to update with any progress I make.

One thing I noticed from a quick glance at the first link you posted is that it says there are only four possible layers for each key. According to the file I just looked at the other night (don't remember which one) there are at least six layers I can use. And that's with just switching. X11 offers even more options if you want to toggle between layouts rather than momentarily switching. If you look at the end of the file it actually lists all the possible options. It looks like you could probably have close to a dozen keyboards available with just a couple keystrokes. That could be useful for people who need to type in multiple languages.

Regarding a graphic interface for tweaking the keymaps, I don't know of any either. But It looks like some of the desktops do at least offer a graphic interface for choosing which keys access the alternate maps. Seems the XFCE I chose to run is not one of those. But it could just be my distro since it does a couple other abnormal things.

[Thrice Xandvii]

I don't know how easily this works for non-Android phones, but one of the methods I stumbled across recently to access a pretty large number of special characters was to add Estonian to my phone. Now, I just hold the spacebar when I'm typing and I can switch to it in a flash and have access to ogoneks, double grave accents, regular accents, crossed o, and numerous other characters like hacek characters, and r with "comma" below (I say comma in quotes since I guess it's supposed to be a cedilla, but that is rendered differently depending on the font). It works pretty well. Vietnamese is another with a bevy of odd and special characters in it.

I'm unsure if there are other languages that support a number of characters like this one does. Hopefully this "tip" helps someone out!

[J_from_Holland]

Is there a How to Add/Insert/Type Special Characters for Mac Users too?
For example, how do you type a schwa?

I. Click where you want the glyph to appear on the document/in the window.
II. Double-click the symbol you want to insert.
That's it.

I know that, but I mean with keyboard shortcuts.

[gestaltist]

Not sure if there is built-in way to do it on a Mac, but you can always download a key remapper.

For IPA, I use this website: http://westonruter.github.io/ipa-chart/keyboard/

[gach]

Regarding a graphic interface for tweaking the keymaps, I don't know of any either. But It looks like some of the desktops do at least offer a graphic interface for choosing which keys access the alternate maps. Seems the XFCE I chose to run is not one of those. But it could just be my distro since it does a couple other abnormal things.

I mostly use MATE which has inherited its keyboard settings tool from GNOME. Its tool has a rich range of layout related shortcut selections including the very useful ones of selecting the position of the compose key and setting a switching key to another layout. At work I have XFCE running on Ubuntu and it looks like the standard keyboard settings tool there doesn't go beyond setting custom application shortcuts.

[Sasquatch]

I mostly use MATE which has inherited its keyboard settings tool from GNOME. Its tool has a rich range of layout related shortcut selections including the very useful ones of selecting the position of the compose key and setting a switching key to another layout. At work I have XFCE running on Ubuntu and it looks like the standard keyboard settings tool there doesn't go beyond setting custom application shortcuts.

That's why the tutorials I had found weren't very helpful to me. They were mostly Gnome tutorials.

It looks like the standard keymap on my box has a plethora of special keys already. I may end up having to tweak another file to get the chooser keys to point to different maps. This might be more complicated than I had thought.

[Netharía]

Regarding a graphic interface for tweaking the keymaps, I don't know of any either. But It looks like some of the desktops do at least offer a graphic interface for choosing which keys access the alternate maps. Seems the XFCE I chose to run is not one of those. But it could just be my distro since it does a couple other abnormal things.

I mostly use MATE which has inherited its keyboard settings tool from GNOME. Its tool has a rich range of layout related shortcut selections including the very useful ones of selecting the position of the compose key and setting a switching key to another layout. At work I have XFCE running on Ubuntu and it looks like the standard keyboard settings tool there doesn't go beyond setting custom application shortcuts.

I mostly use MATE which has inherited its keyboard settings tool from GNOME. Its tool has a rich range of layout related shortcut selections including the very useful ones of selecting the position of the compose key and setting a switching key to another layout. At work I have XFCE running on Ubuntu and it looks like the standard keyboard settings tool there doesn't go beyond setting custom application shortcuts.

That's why the tutorials I had found weren't very helpful to me. They were mostly Gnome tutorials.

It looks like the standard keymap on my box has a plethora of special keys already. I may end up having to tweak another file to get the chooser keys to point to different maps. This might be more complicated than I had thought.

XFCE has very poor keyboard customization features. Stock (ie without hacking something in yourself) you can't save a Compose key assignment across sessions, for example. Other options include

Code: Select all

setxkbmap -option compose:ralt

insert your key of choice instead of ralt, if you wish of course. That won't save across sessions, so you either have to run it every time (me 'cause I'm lazy/easily routined) or set it to autorun on startup.

Beyond that, I'd suggest UIM's X-SAMPA > IPA plugin.

[Vardelm]

You can change a registry setting so that Windows can take alt codes to type Unicode. I have this set on Windows 10, and it works well. See "Method 1" in the link below.

http://www.fileformat.info/tip/microsof ... nicode.htm

[kiwikami]

If the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator is giving anyone trouble, the Keyboard Layout Manager might work out. I was having a heck of a time getting MKLC to work on my laptop after moving to Windows 10 from 8, but KLM is working fine, although it seems some glitches can be avoided by making sure that whatever language base you start the keyboard with isn't the same as the one for your normal keyboard (that is, if your keyboard is, say, US English QWERTY, set the one you make to be a different "language" entirely, not just another "US English" variety); otherwise it may be rather difficult to switch between the two. At least, I found it confuzzling. But then I am not yet competent in Windows 10. The main drawback to KLM is that the files you create aren't as easily movable between computers, but it may be a handy alternative.

[Frislander]

Does anyone know any good IPA keyboards for Android phone users?