I have searched all corners of the internet, yet to find an answer to my simple question:
How to place, directly from keyboard input, the Em-Dash "—" character onto a code editor such as Notepad++ or Dreamweaver using modern notebooks (such as a dell xps 13" 2015, win10 64bit) without:
any extended keyboard numbpad, obviously;
any third party automation scripting softwares;
any charactermap insertion tools such as windows charactermap
How? Thanks!
I imagine you're asking about how to do it in Windows here.
I assume you know how you'd do it if you had a numeric keypad (Alt + 0151 if as it seems you are on the 1252 code page).
See also Insert Unicode characters via the keyboard? , in order to use the unicode value (Alt + +2014) .
This is an at least related question: How to emulate numpad on a PC laptop?
Possible solutions:
Most notebooks do have an hidden "numpad", accessible through the Fn key (see for example https://www.dummies.com/computers/pcs/the-hidden-numeric-keypad-on-your-laptop/ ).
I couldn't find out for sure if the Dell XPS 13 specifically does, but it is very likely.
This Me and My Dell manual (Using numeric keypad on a laptop) seems to explain its usage for all Dell laptops.
Use copy and paste (copy the character from some place and paste in the editor). A clipboard manager might help you if you choose to go this way.
You might also use some third-party software to have that character emitted when you press a key or shortcut, but I guess that is included in your "third party automation scripting softwares" prescription.
Use the unicode combination! I now found out that with that one you can use indifferently both numbers from the keypad and normal ones !
Unfortunately it still requires the numpad's "plus" (add) key, so you need to be able to type at least that.
See Insert Unicode characters via the keyboard? or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_input to learn how to enable the combination, if it is not already enabled.
If there indeed exist laptops with no numeric keypad support unfortunately the Windows developers didn't fully anticipate for that; it probably wouldn't take much and wouldn't have negative repercussions for Windows to support the insertion via the normal numeric keys (or the normal + for the Unicode combination), but for now it's not supported (as far as I know).
It would be a bad mistake on the part of the laptops' developers to not include any way to type the numpad keys, though, as they are required by many programs.
Related
I've been trying out APL. I'm running Windows 10 and I've installed Dyalog 18.0, and the APL Language and APL Backtick Symbols extentions for VS Code.
But even though I'm not running any of these programs, sometimes suddenly my keyboard is hyjacked! All my ctrl commands are replaced by APL symbols.
E.g. ctrl-Z (undo) becomes ⊂ and ctrl-A (select all) becomes ⍺. I have no idea why and how to disable this again. This makes it very hard to do my work!!!
I've been googling for this, but haven't found an answer so far. I've looked at the Windows keyboard settings, but it looks normal. The locale settings are also correct.
I'm now just de-installing everything, but that way I need to reinstall every time I want to try out APL.
Can somebody tell me what is happening and how to fix it? (And tell me who to complain to that this is a very hostile feature)
I am sorry that our Unicode IME is causing you confusion.
I do like using it, but there are some Windows settings which I set to make things easier.
Start button->Settings
In the "Find a setting" edit field, type Advanced keyboard settings
Click on the icon with that text on it
Under Switching input methods:
Tick the “Let me set a different input method for each app window”
Tick the "Use the desktop language bar when it's available". This option will show the orange D icon when our Dyalog Unicode IME is active.
On this same dialog, there is a Input language hot keys.
I find it convenient to select a hot key combination to activate our Unicode IME, and another one to go back to the default Windows keyboard layout.
Close this dialog with the X button in the top right.
If you have further problems or questions, you can always ask us at support#dyalog.com
By the way, we put links to advice pages about keyboards on our website under Resources->Fonts and Keyboards.
Regards,
Vince
When installing the standard Dyalog IME, there is a new keyboard input method on Windows. Have you checked WinKey+Space? This should cycle through available keyboard layouts and you should find your previous/default layout available there.
I personally agree that this is not a good way to handle keyboarding and causes many issues for newcomers to APL. Dyalog is aware and are looking into alternatives that can be comfortable for both new and existing users.
You can uninstall the standard IME without uninstalling the entire interpreter by running the Dyalog uninstaller (search "uninstall Dyalog" in your start menu) and selecting just the IME.
For now, I recommend the APL Wiki article on Typing Glyphs for some ideas for alternatives to the standard IME: https://aplwiki.com/wiki/Typing_glyphs#Windows
I personally use the abrudz keyboard with Alt Gr as the switching key.
I just wanted to add that your complaint has reached the people who need to be complained to. This is a difficult problem space, between changing technologies, multiple platforms, new or casual users of APL and the folks who use APL all the time and want to type APL symbols into e-mail messages, etc. It is most definitely time for an overhaul of the keyboard technologies that we use and this will be on the to do list for the next development cycle. Until then, I hope you manage to get by with the advice that has been offered so far!
Thanks for the shout,
Morten Kromberg, CTO, Dyalog
I recently obtained a personal licence for Dyalog APL and started using it (I'm switching over from APLX). I really like it, but whenever I'm not using the IDE, the APL symbol keybindings persist. For example, if I try to undo something in another application by hitting CTRL-Z, I'll instead get ⊂ and the undo will not go through. Similarly, attempting to use CTRL-S to save a document will result in me typing ⌈ instead of saving. The only way I've been able to resolve this is by restarting my computer.
How can I disable APL symbol input after the IDE is either not in focus or has been closed? If there's no way to do that, is it possible to map the symbol shortcut to ALT instead of CTRL? ALT is used far less often than CTRL for shortcuts, so I could live with that.
I'm using Windows 8.1 64 bit and the 64 bit version of Dyalog APL with a US keyboard.
If you want to use AltGr (right side Alt) to enter APL symbols while keeping a normal US layout or an almost normal UK layout, you can use my keyboard layout instead of the IDE. This avoids almost all clashes with other applications, so you can keep the keyboard active at all times and forget about mode switching.
Dyalog uses a standard Windows mechanism called "IME" (Input Method Editor) to enable input of APL-Characters. The advantage is that this enables you to use APL-Symbols anywhere - but obviously there is a 2nd side to that.
The "challenge" in your setup is only to change the IME back from APL to regular text-mode and this does not need a reboot. Pls check this article for more info on IME: https://www.google.de/amp/www.thewindowsclub.com/input-method-editors-windows/amp
(Sorry, I'm using W10, so I rather refer you to that article than giving wrong info... BTW, the advantage of W10 is that the IME will be default work in application-mode, so you can go to WinWord there and use default hotkeys w/o switching IME.)
Edit: For those using W10 (and probably W11) that article is out of date. The Languages settings are no longer in the Control Panel and are now in Settings. Go to Time and Language>Keyboard>"Input language hot keys" and change the Key sequence for "Between input languages". The "Switch Keyboard Layout" shortcut will be the one that toggles between keyboard layouts (I have Shift+LeftAlt toggling between Dyalog and US). You can also see which keyboard you are using on the taskbar by adjusting "Language bar options" on the same Settings page.
I've been looking for the answer for quite some time now. This is a project I have but I can't manage to find a way to do it. The main idea would be to plug an additional keyboard on my computer that write multiple letters by hitting only one key. For example, instead of writing down a (when I hit the a key), it would write \textbf{ (for example).
I already manage to find the keyboard layout file under Linux and to switch the a and b keys, but I cannot find a way to print multiple characters.
I know it exist editors (like Texmaker or Kile) that have auto-completion, but I'm most of the time working in project in groups and therefore we use writelatex.com which does not propose auto-completion in it's free user pack ! Besides, I'm doing that for my personal interest.
Thanks a lot.
Have a look at autokey. It can assign phrases to hotkeys. It requires X11.
Another option might be to use a powerful text editor like vim or emacs which both have features like this, and then copy/paste the text into writelatex.com.
Some browsers have add-ons that allow you to edit the contents of a text field on a web page with a chosen text editor.
Edit: In Xorg you can use the X KeyBoard extension to e.g. change the meaning of individual keys. While you can configure the keyboard to generate (multibyte) unicode characters, you cannot assign arbitraty character strings to one key, to the best of my knowledge.
I've been using some mappings in Vim to avoid having to switch keyboard layouts to type in diacritics in my language (Croatian). However, now I wanted to move these mappings "up" so that they're available globally. I tried using AutoHotkey for this. Here are the mappings I wrote
#CommentFlag //
!;::Send {U+010D} // č
!'::Send {U+0107} // ć
!]::Send {U+0111} // đ
![::Send {U+0161} // š
!\::Send {U+017E} // ž
These work great in every application I've tried (browsers, notepad, MS Word), but don't work in Vim, which is pretty annoying as I do most of my typing there. More specifically, only 'š' and 'ž' work as expected, while both Alt-; and Alt-' give me a 'c' (instead of 'č' and 'ć'), and Alt-] gives a 'd' (instead of a 'đ').
I'm using AutoHotkey_L (though I had the same results with the "regular" AHK), Vim 7.3 (trying this in gVim; it doesn't work in the terminal version either (in a slightly different way) but I don't really care about that) on Win8.
I can give more info on the Vim version, but it's basically one of those windows binaries from vim.org. Things I guess might be important is that it has +multi_byte, and I've been using Unicode in it with no problems whatsoever.
Update:
As per Ingo's suggestion below, I've tried using IfWinNotActive to not have the mappings present in Vim and continue to use my old ones there. Here's one example I've tried
SetTitleMatchMode 2
IfWinNotActive GVIM
{
#CommentFlag //
!;::Send {U+010D} // č
!'::Send {U+0107} // ć
!]::Send {U+0111} // đ
![::Send {U+0161} // š
!\::Send {U+017E} // ž
}
I've also tried many other variations with the Vim window class (using ahk_class), with #IfWindowNotActive etc., but to no avail... The mappings are still there in Vim. Btw, the window title always contains the string "GVIM", and AHK sees that as I've confirmed with WinGetTitle.
I don't have a solution, but a workaround: When I faced with the same issue, I decided to emulate Vim's digraphs globally (also using AutoHotkey), and just except Vim (and applications like Remote Desktop) from that feature (so that the full range can still be used there; my script only supports a subset). You can find my implementation here.
You can also edit a keyboard layout itself, using Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator.
For example, the English one that you use: choose combination of some character and some function key (Ctrl or Right-Alt, with or without Shift − e.g. for Caps).
Here’s how it looks:
I find the Apple International US layout very good for this purpose, having all the accents available using dead keys, so I've implemented it with Microsoft Keyboard Layout creator like stansult suggested.
Then I came up with the problem of having only one "Alt" key usable, so I ended up remapping my Windows and Alt keys using ScanCodemap. This is a viable solution if you don't use the Windows key that often. One caveat of this method is, that you'll have to use Win+Tab instead of Alt+Tab from now on to switch between windows, it takes a couple of days to get used to that.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
; 0x003a001d: Caps Lock (0x3a) -> Left Ctrl (0x1d)
; 0x0038e038: Left Alt (0xe05c) -> Right Alt (0x38)
; 0xe05b0038: Left Windows (0xe05b) -> Left Alt (0x38)
; 0xe05c0038: Right Windows (0xe05c) -> Left Alt (0x38)
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout]
"Scancode Map"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,05,00,00,00,1d,00,3a,00,38,e0,38,00,38,00,5b,e0,38,00,5c,e0,00,00,00,00
I just started programming J. Now I want to type
text=: 'hello world'
text
in the gtk terminal, which when run should display:
hello world
But when I type the single quote character it renders as ´, not as ' in the gtk terminal. And then when I run the program the interpreter says "spelling error".
Now the only way I can put a ' in the terminal is by typing it in notepad and pasting it in the gtk terminal. I find that cumbersome.
Now my question is:
Is there an easier way to type a ' in the gtk terminal?
I have Windows 7 64 bits version, also 64 bits version of J, version j64-701.
I just encountered this problem as well, and it appears that this is caused by a keyboard setting (controlling whether quotes appear directly or can be used to make é, ë and the like).
This setting can be changed in almost all Windows applications by pressing Left Alt + Shift. After using this combination, the single quotes appeared correctly for me.
HTH.
I've faced exactly the same problem and I found out that it happens in every software that uses GTK+ (Pidgin, GIMP, Geany, etc), if you have set your keyboard to English-International, when you press the single quote(')/double quote(") key, what you get is acute accent(´)/diacritic(¨).
The best solution to me was, adding the English-US keyboard to the list of available keyboards in Windows (yes, this solution is for windows but you can easily do something similar in any SO you are facing the same problem).
And when I want to input an [ ' ], I just press the default combination LEFT CONTROL + SHIFT to toggle between keyboards.
Long shot, but I'm guessing it's a keyboard thing. My French keyboard has a funky layout, and yours (I'm guessing Dutch?) might have one too. I guess I'm lucky, under Vista 64, I get single quotes, with the right key.
I think it's a bug of the specific version of J. I will ask this question to the support of the producers of J.