Just take a picture of the Wikipedia page and use OCR. No need for that copy and pasting nonsense.
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
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.
For most letters RightAlt-[The letter] will do it for me.
That sounds easier than remembering the arcane number associated with an accent.
On macOS you can hold down ‘e’ to do this, too.
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 [].
I do this to type ™®©• on my computer
Wikipedia is where I get my interrobangs.
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.
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.
You mean \lambda, \Delta and \Phi?
Not all of us are able to use superior tools like LaTeX for our documents, unfortunately
If you are using office, insert formula accepts latex code.
Good to know. Been learning some LaTeX from a friend recently, so I’ll have to try this out.
You mean LATEX?
(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.)
Stop! Sync for Lemmy and/or markdown can only go so far…
Today I learned that Markdown in Eternity can handle
ALPHABETSOU^P
Use compose key. Or is that not available on Windows?
when I was younger, instead of just using shift, i used to press the caps lock key and then turn it off lol
My wife does this and it drives me crazy!
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.
tHats cool and all but How do I get tHe otHer letters uppercase too
Modifier key
Use auto hotkey and set up so that super + {letter} gives you the uppercase letter
I ThINK I MESSED IT UP
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?
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.
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.
Heh, I remember reading that one on the irc quote database.
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.
You joke but Google is the easiest way to get the Euro symbol on a UK keyboard.
You guys are taking this Brexit thing really seriously.
I just wanna know when their referendum to join the US is gonna happen
Right Alt + e?
Isn’t that just AltGr+4? A lot of UK keyboards write € on the 4 keycap next to the $.
None of the ones I’ve used tbh. That might just be luck though.
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…
I actually do this for complicated letter that I don’t know.
Like: ë, ñ, ũ, ü, etc
On Android ü just hard press the letter and they all pop up. ñot hárd
Yeah, I know. I was mostly talking on a computer.
Send yourself an email from your phone.
Draw it on a piece of paper and mail it to your computer.
Yeah, not really lol
Ctrl-period or Ctrl-comma. Granted, you have to search with your eyes for the correct one, but they are in alphabetical order.
Use compose keys! KDE already has it installed and on Windows you can use WinCompose.
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.
Y’all motherfuckers need the compose key.
I admit I’ve never used it, but it seems to require you to know in advance the key presses to get the character you want, so it’s not going to help if it’s a character you only use rarely.
I used to google for it, but now I ask chatgpt. Thats probably way worse resource-wise, right?
this is causing me physical pain
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
Prêss æñd høld for Samsung and Google keyboards
I use SwiftKey, though.
Stop that. Data collection concerns.
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 ~, etcBut 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☺andCompose+CCCPfor☭, 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.
Æ
Compose-Shift-a-e
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!
You could get an external keyboard to use with your laptop.
I literally have one at home and didn’t think of that. Thanks.
That’s how I type everything, I just have pages of pages of text with characters and then I scroll through and click each page where a character may be used
H
Can I borrow this?
Just do it.
I used to do this, but then I changed to Hat. It’s increased my productivity significantly and saves me multiple hours each week.
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.
I mean in this economy who can blame them
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.
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.
sudo -ku if you feel like getting crazy
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.
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.
as someone who types special characters a lot, I can’t believe how people go about without the compose key
yo watch this
- – — ‽Found the neo user.
What is neo? Are you talking about neovim? I’ve never used it
Guess I lost that gamble.
This neo: https://neo-layout.org/Layouts/neo/
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
