Just a note that all of this is specific to Windows. I suspect that anyone reading this forum on a Mac or a Unix box will see garbage.
Actually, no — the method used for input is independent of the results, so for the most part all of the symbols in these posts look normal to Macfolk viewing the thread. Presumably likewise for Slackware & BSD users etc.
Unless you mean “if Mac or Unix users follow the instructions to generate characters they’ll get garbage”. Yeah, Alt-0233 on a Mac generates: “0233” (using the num pad like you would on a Windows PC). Not quite garbage but not the results described in the thread.
But our way of generating the special characters is pretty easy for us, so except for Mac newbies, most Macfolk already know how to generate special characters and have memorized the ones we use most often.
Most of them are at least pseudo-mnemonic.
Option-c is ç because it’s a variant on c; The omega (vBulletin won’t accept it for input) is option-z. The german ß (often written as double-s instead) is option-s. The “thorn” (vBulletin won’t take it) is option-d. The copyright © can’t be option-c because ç already took it, so it’s option-g, which is more of a visual mnemonic. The cent sign ¢ is option-4, parallel to $ which is shift-4; British £ is option-3, parallel to # (the pound sign, get it?) which is shift-3. Spanish punctuation like ¡ and ¿ are variations on the ! and ? keys (option-1 and shift-option-/ respectively).
The division sign ÷ is option /, by the way. Bullets • are option-8 parallel to * which is shift-8, and the degree symbol ° is option-shift-8. The ellipsis mark … is option-; (another visual mnemonic, shift-; is the colon, :, so it’s the “dot key” already); greater-than-or-equals and lesser-than-or equals (vBulletin won’t…etc) are option < and option > respectively. M-dash — is shift-option hyphen (-) or shift-option-minus if you prefer, and N-dash – is just option-hyphen.
The Mac-only symbol “not equals”, (vBulletin won’…) (equals sign with a slash through it), is option =. ±, the plus-or-minus sign is shift-option- =, parallel to shift = which is the + sign. And so on. There are a few that ended up in less intuitive placed (usually because the more intuitive places had been taken), but it’s all a heck of a lot easier to pick up than “Oh, I want ç so I can type garçon, is that Alt-0231 or Alt-0321?”
Dunno how Unix folken get their special characters, I’ll leave it to one of them to enlighten us.
When I used to use a Sun UltraSparc, there was a “Compose” key on the keyboard, which worked a bit like the Mac’s “Option” key. While holding down Compose, you typed two regular characters, and the result was a special character — from the upper half of ISO-Latin1, I believe. (Unicode wasn’t popular enough yet.) The order in which you typed the two input characters was unimportant.
Some characters don’t always display properly.
For example,
ALT 236 should yield the infnity symbol ∞
ALT 251, the square root symbol √ and
ALT 0128, the Euro-currency symbol €
Some people might not be seeing those symbols or might be seeing something else entirely.