Þ,§, and other symbols

Northern_Piper · September 2, 1999, 4:59am

numbers? alt key?

this entire discussion just re-affirmed my decision to get an iMac

AHunter3 · September 2, 1999, 2:35pm

Amen to that! And I think there are some symbols that Windows users can’t even make at all, like the em dash (single symbol that looks like “–” without the hole), the ellipsis “…”, etc., and how the heck is anyone supposed to remember dozens of Alt-digit-digit-digit codes? Not to mention laptops, which don’t have separate keypads, so you have to use Alt-fn-(search all around in the vicinity of your “k” key for the little purple fn-enabled numbers)-digit-fn-digit-fn-digit!

(Of course, I do wish Steve Jobs would bite the bullet and make the switch to two-buttoned mice instead of Control-clicking).

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Jophiel · September 2, 1999, 4:11pm

Actually, I’ve never used a word processor that didn’t turn “–” into a single dash (though “——” is easy enough to make anyway), any what’s so hard about pressing the period key three times (though again, it’s easy enough to make the “…” symbol. I don’t like it —— too small)? As for “remembering all those ALT codes”, just use the character map. All nice and listed and in a neat little table for you to either use the codes or cut and paste.

Anyway, my original reason for replying is this: What is the þ symbol used for anyway? It comes in capital and lowercase versions, so I assume it’s a letter, but I can’t figure out from what alphabet.

“I guess it is possible for one person to make a difference, although most of the time they probably shouldn’t.”

Polycarp · September 2, 1999, 4:22pm

Jophiel, it’s the “thorn” from the old Germanic alphabets (not runes; that’s a whole other bundle of twigs). It was used in English until about 1200, some of the Scandinavian countries until later (when? I’m not sure), and is still used in Iceland. It represents the unvoiced th sound in thin, as opposed to the voiced one in “then”, which uses yet another letter, the “edh,” which looks like a D or d with a line through the upright (capital and lower case respectively, of course).

OpalCat · September 2, 1999, 4:31pm

To use the Russian alphabet you just need a cyrillic font. There are lots of them out there.

>^,^<
“Cluemobile? You’ve got a pickup…”
OpalCat’s site: http://fathom.org/opalcat
The Teeming Millions Homepage: fathom.org/teemingmillions

system · September 3, 1999, 5:05am

Character Map is often not installed with 95/95. If you really can’t live without it, got to Start, Settings, Control Panel, and double click Add/Remove Programs. Click the Windows Setup Tab, and double click the Accessories check box. This should take you to a list of Accessories you can install, and Charcter Map should be one of them.

OpalCat · September 3, 1999, 5:17am

Check out this utility btw. It blows Character Map out of the water:

http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/5900/ecm.htm

>^,^<
“Cluemobile? You’ve got a pickup…”
OpalCat’s site: http://fathom.org/opalcat
The Teeming Millions Homepage: fathom.org/teemingmillions

AWB · September 2, 1999, 6:39pm

Skullar: Does anyone know how to make Russian (Cyrillic) symbols? I always thought the symbol ‘zhe’ was really cool. I also have one minor practical use.

You could try using the HTML escape sequence characters with the format: &#number;

For example: $amp;#1076; produces д

Here’s a chart of the cyrillic characters

Kobolde, die sich mit rotheissen Schuereisen unter Aussenaborten verbergen.

To what does this refer?
“To Kobolde, with red-hot Schuereisen under external toilets hide themselves”

AWB · September 2, 1999, 6:41pm

Sorry, that should have read:

“For example: д produces д”

And don’t ask me how that huge space appeared. No NTML I made, I don’t think.

AHunter3 · September 3, 1999, 2:23am

Ahh, the secrets of the universe, cross-platform no less!

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Babar714 · September 3, 1999, 1:56pm

AWB, I don’t get it. How do you do those again? Do I need the right program? What is the exact button sequence to achieve the cryllic letters?

AWB · September 8, 1999, 7:27pm

The codes I listed are only useful if HTML parsing is on, like for the message here.

The exact format is
An ampersand: “&”
A pound sign: “#”
A number: “1111” for example
A semicolon: “;”

Put them together: ї = ї

dougie_monty · November 27, 2000, 10:13pm

The Character Map didn’t seem to have these symbols:

The Turkish back-vowel “I” with the dot on the capital but not on the lower-case.
The Polish “a,” upper- and lower-case, with the cedilla, to indicate the vowel is nasalized.
Ditto for the nasalized Polish “e.”
The Portuguese lower-case “a,” with the tilde over it, to indicate the vowel is nasalized.
The lower-case “d” with the horizontal line across it, near the top, used in Icelandic to indicate the sound of th in “this.”
Anyone know how to make those?
Thanks very much.

Zenster · November 27, 2000, 10:42pm

Most, if not all of this stuff is available from the Special Characters located under “Insert Symbol” in Word for Windows.

I have merely created a file that contains all of the special symbols that I use and pasted it into a notepad file. To insert a character, merely open the file and C&P the symbol.

This would seem to be a lot more painless than memorizing all of the special keystrokes. Then again, if I had dangerous amounts of spare time…

Wait, I do have dangerous amounts of spare time, after all I’m replying to this thread, aren’t I?

LazarusLong42 · November 27, 2000, 11:22pm

(Note: the following applies, AFAIK, only to Word 2000. YMMV.)

Yet another way to make the more common characters–the ones with diacritics, specifically–is to use a keystroke combination, which is a lot easier to remember than Alt-NNNN.

So, for instance, for a-umlaut/diaresis (ä), type:

Ctrl-Shift-; (or Ctrl-: ), then type the letter “a”.

For e-grave (è), type: Ctrl-` (that’s the character under the tilde at the top left of your KB), then “e”.

The ones I know of for certain:

acute: Ctrl-’ (apostrophe)
grave: Ctrl- umlaut/diaresis: Ctrl-: or Ctrl-Shift-; tilde: Ctrl-~ or Ctrl-Shift-
circumflex/caret: Ctrl-^ or Ctrl-Shift-6
ring: Ctrl-@ or Ctrl-Shift-2
cedilla: Ctrl-,
slash (ø): Ctrl-/

While you’re looking at the character map, if you have it, check out Arial Unicode MS… which appears to have pretty much all of the unicode characters, including IPA characters, katakana, and all sorts of other goodies.

LL

tomndebb · November 27, 2000, 11:29pm

ALT + 0195 --> Ã
ALT + 0227 --> ã

ALT + 0208 --> Ð
ALT + 0240 --> ð (These last two characters are the “edh” character mentioned in an earlier post.)
Additional trivia: the “thorn” (Þ/ALT+ 0222 and þ/ALT + 0254) was used in England to indicate the first two characters of the word “the” (despite the fact that our current pronunciation would have dictated the “edh”) leading to the appearance of signs beginning “Þe” which has mutated into “Ye”.

“Ye Brew Pub” should be pronounced “The Brew Pub,” not “Yeee Brew Pub,” since the apparent “Y” is actually just a corrupted Þ.

dougie_monty · December 2, 2000, 9:29pm

Well, here goes:
Right away I found it doesn’t work. The character map, for Arial and Times Roman, and presumably all other fonts, is not that extensive; I’d do better using MS Word and clicking on Symbol on the Insert drop-down menu. So unless there is a way to get the Turkish and Polish symbols (that I have yet to find) with Alt + a number on the keypad I couldn’t get those letters online.

Welfy · December 2, 2000, 9:53pm

I have an entire list of all the characters, too…

Guinastasia · December 2, 2000, 10:18pm

Does anyone know of a really decent Cyrillic font? The ones I have are crap.

dougie_monty · December 9, 2000, 8:53pm

These don’t appear on the character map–and not all computers in the El Camino College library have them in MS Word under the Symbol feature (on the Insert drop-down menu). I mean the c, g, h, j, and s with the circumflex, and the u with the breve. (If I ever get a computer of my own I’ll make sure it does have them.)

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Þ,§, and other symbols

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