Some things are easy (easier?) to type on a Mac: with option + character I can get Greek or math symbols like ∑, ø, ∂, ƒ, ∆, ¬, Ω, ≈, √, ∫, µ, ≤, ≥, ÷. As for Greek more generally, though, it’s not any easier than on a Windows machine – either way you’d probably be best off setting up a Greek keyboard and switch with a keyboard shortcut.
MS Word is pretty nice for entering equations, FWIW … you can use a fair subset of LaTeX if you know it.
Cool. Thanks.
OTOH, if Windows had mapped uppercase Delta to j and uppercase Sigma to w the folks in Mac-land would be howling about how typically Microsoft uinintuitive that was; Delta should *of course *be option-shift-D and Sigma should be option-shift-S. 
Well, the option key is used for more than just Greek. Option-s is already used for the German ß, and option-d and option-D are the math symbols ∂ and…
hm. OK, I thought that option-D was going to be the del symbol (an upside-down triangle), but I’m not actually getting anything from that one.
Just for the sake of experiment, here’s what I get from the entire keyboard:
`¡™£¢∞§¶•ªº–≠
œ∑´®†¥¨ˆøπ“‘«
åß∂ƒ©˙∆˚¬…æ
Ω≈ç√∫˜µ≤≥÷
(note: The ´¨˜ characters can all be followed by a variety of characters, to put the accent mark over them, like à, é, ö, ñ) And shifted: ⁄€‹›fifl‡°·‚—±
Œ ´‰ˇÁ¨ˆØ∏”’»
ÅÍ Ï ÓÔÒÚÆ
¸ ◊ı˜Â¯˘¿
(some of the shifted characters didn’t do anything, or did something other than producing a character; I left a space for those).
∇
… [smile] …
Almost, but not quite, as cool as an APL character set.
Gosh I miss APL. Shame I have no earthly use for it these days.
[nitpick]
sigma
[/nitpick]
meh … it’s all Greek to me …
In addition to the option and command keys on the keyboard, there’s an icon on the upper right hand of the screen that is the descendant of the old “Keycaps” feature. It shows all the available math symbols, Greek, box-drawing, and so on. Extremely easy to use. Between that and the option and command keys, I’ve never had to go hunting on wiki to copy and paste a particular symbol, nor need to use ASCII codes, or any of those things. It’s all there on my keyboard and screen.
Now, the telepathic command thing, Apple hasn’t perfected. Rumour has it that Jobs was working on it before he died, but it was sabotaged by others in Apple because Jobs was already enough of an asshole just using his voice and e-mail - they didn’t want to take a chance on him being able to boss them around in their heads as well.
Back in the Paleo DOPE, we had a similar thread:
¡ ásçìï çöðès for Special Characters using PCs!
If one needs to type an entire sentence in Greek without using special characters for each letter, simply enclose the sentence in the [noparse][symbol] [/symbol][/noparse] tags and use the following alphabet conversion.
[symbol] A B G D E Z H Q I K L M N X O P R S T U F C Y W[/symbol]
A B G D E Z H Q I K L M N X O P R S T U F C Y W
[symbol] a b g d e z h q i k l m n x o p q r s t u f c y w[/symbol]
a b g d e z h q i k l m n x o p q r s t u f c y w
Thank you.
Agreed that alt+ codes and Wiki-ing or Googling are doing it the most convoluted way possible. I cringe when people show me their hand-written list of alt codes laboriously dug out from random websites like some precious gold nuggets of secret Windows lore. Always makes me think of this: xkcd: Workaround
The Windows equivalent of Keycaps is “Character Map” aka charmap.exe. The two apps function almost identically. The big difference is that by default Charmap is not a permanent shortcut/link/icon on the screen. Though it can be made so with a couple clicks. The modern version includes a search feature so you can type in e.g. “sigma” and immediately see all 10 variants available.
The Windows platform includes the so-called Win key in lieu of the Mac Option key. The Win has lots and lots of uses for activating various OS verbs rather than being used for alternate character entry. Sadly, despite being about 20 years old now it remains an absolute mystery to most users. Since much of the user world is migrating away from keyboards towards touch and eventually talk for everything, it will remain underused and not understood.
The Win key is the one with the windows logo on it, by the space bar?
I use Windows at work and have had that key forever on my keyboards, but I have never once been told what it’s for, in any MS manual or on-line tutorial.
tomndebb, what browser are you using that still supports the Symbol font? The Mozilla family of browsers (currently Firefox) haven’t supported that for over a decade now, and I didn’t think IE or Chrome did, either.
I tested it before, and the symbol font still worked on Internet Explorer, either version 9 or 10.
The Symbol font still works on Chrome 55, as well. I know Firefox doesn’t support it because it’s not a part of the HTML5 spec, but Internet Explorer, and, to a lesser extend, Chrome, have reason to hold on to legacy stuff.
Yep, that’s the one. Ask and ye shall receive.
Direct from the horse’s mouth: Keyboard shortcuts in Windows - Microsoft Support. Scroll down about 1/3 of the way for the complete list of all 40-ish Win+<whatever> functions. There were fewer in earlier versions on Windows, but even ancient XP had 20-ish Win+<whatever> commands.
Huh, I thought that Chrome was even more of a stickler for standards than Firefox was. In any event, though, if you use Symbol, there’s a sizeable chunk of viewers that won’t see them.
Works in Chrome and Edge.
Does not work in Safari on iPhone.
Does not work in tapatalk on Android. You see the raw [noparse][symbol][/symbol][/noparse] tags and the ordinary Latin alphabet characters.
!= ≠ ≠ (! and = does not equal does not equal)