Hi Catherine, I have a general suggestion that should help you enter all kinds of text more easily, which is to use a third-party program for text expansion like "aText" ($5 in the Mac app store), or to at least use custom text substitution that you can set up under the "Text" pane of your Mac's "Text & Language" page of System Preferences. However, I'll first try to answer your question about entering unicode characters.
I've entered unicode characters, but not by the unicode numbers. If you're trying to type the more common special characters and symbols, then the easiest way I've found is to type these is with Option key combinations. I'll post some of these combinations (pasted from an old list post) at the end of this message. Please note that the Option key combinations depend on your input language keyboard. The ones I list are for an English language keyboard, and I've noted the differences between British and U.S. English (mainly a couple of instances in the currency symbols for pounds and Euros -- other English input keyboards that use dollars will be like the U.S. keyboards in this regard.) Also note that the description mostly matches what VoiceOver will say, but I use "Angstrom" instead of "A ring", because that's how the symbol is used in what I read. If you want to know how to type accented characters, Anne, I, or others, can follow up in a second post about using Option key combinations. Depending on the letter you want to accent, or whether you want to type the accent by itself, you'll type these in different ways. Only accents that are uniquely associated with a specific letter, like the cedilla with the "c" in French, or the German esszett for "sharp s", can be typed as Option+c and Option+s. You can also look up external sources like The Mac also lets you enter special characters using the "character viewer". You can bring up this window from TextEdit or Mail by choosing the last entry in the "Edit" menu on the application's menu bar. This will be labeled "Special Characters…" Navigate to this option directly once you've arrowed down into the "Edit" menu by pressing Command+down arrow, or else if you're in TextEdit you can use the Command+Option+t shortcut. If you use multiple languages on your Mac, you'll probably have "Show input menu in menu bar" checked as a preference option, and have that menu on your status menu bar (move there with Control-F8 or VO-m-m). This entry can also be brought up with the "Show Character Viewer" option under your "Input Menu". The "Character Viewer" window is accessible, and if you set the pop up in the title bar to "Code Tables", I believe you can locate unicode characters by their code numbers. I've never used the character viewer with unicode characters. In general, you can find a special character set that you want, and put it on the favorites tab in the character viewer, but I've never found this convenient to use. It's much easier to copy a set of symbols from some other source -- like a web page -- to a TextEdit window and save them there. This is how I handled special characters -- like Cyrillic characters from Russian, very early on, when many options were not accessible. Basically, you'll need to supply a little more information about the kind of unicode characters you need to work with before we can give more concrete suggestions. However, there are a few ways to simplify typing them once you have them identified. First, Mountain Lion supports a feature for text expansion of custom snippets. This was introduced in Snow Leopard, so everyone should use this, but there is a new feature in Mountain Lion that allows you to view your text "Substitutions" (as Apple describes this) in the same "Edit" menu that you use for choosing "Special Characters", and also edit them by selecting the "Text Replacement" option in the submenu. (These are not the most obvious labels to use for this feature.) The text substitution feature allows you to define your own custom way of typing special characters or long phrases, and have those characters or phrases substituted in your text. You set this up under System Preferences > Language & Text in the table on the "Text" pane. Navigate to the "Add" button and press it (VO-Space). Then type first the text string you want to type for your custom character or phrase; press tab, and type or paste in the special characters or phrase you want substituted for this. You can add as many custom snippets as you want. This is a way to add emoticons to your email, or long signatures without having to type every word. You could add snippet definitions for your email address, phone number, and custom signature. Use a string or an initial character for your snippet shortcut that you are not likely to type by mistake, like ";sig1" where the first symbol is a semi-colon. When you're finished adding your custom snippets, stop interacting with the table and close the Language & Text window with Command-w. Now, when you type your custom characters in an email message or when editing documents, they'll be replaced with your substitution text or characters. There's an AppleVis podcast that demos this: • Using the Built-in Text Expander on Mac OS X http://www.applevis.com/podcast/episodes/using-built-text-expander-mac-os-x The Mac text substitution feature is handy, and will work in most of the apps you use, like mail and TextEdit. However, if you want to use your snippet shortcuts system wide, add more complicated shortcut definitions than simple substitution, like have the actual date or time inserted when you type a snippet, and have your snippets sync to Dropbox, you might want to invest in a third party text expander. "aText", which is $4.99 at the Mac App Store, seems to have very good reviews. LifeHacker recently reported a new update, about two months ago, that supports the shortcut expansion for files placed on Dropbox. The latest version supports Snow Leopard and Lion, as well. There's also a version at the developer's web site that supports Snow Leopard on the older PPC Macs. I wonder if someone on the list could check out the free 15-day trial download from their web site and report back: http://www.trankynam.com/atext/ I took a quick look at the "aText" application, and it seems accessible and worth while, but I'm already running TextExpander on my system (more options, but more expensive, with the previous unique feature that it supports this kind of sync option on Dropbox, etc and also with the TextExpander Touch app that I run on my iOS devices). I like the TextExpander interface better, but at $5 vs $35 for TextExpander, aText seems like a bargain for what it does. In TextExpander when I run through the list of my snippets, I get both the replacement text and the shortcut announced. With aText I have to do a VO-j to I did read that you have to keep aText running for it to work (while TextExpander runs in background). I'd also suggest that whoever tests out aText go into its preferences pane (Command-comma), and change the "Play feedback sound" option from it's default value of "click" to some other more distinctive alert sound. Originally, I thought that I wasn't getting a sound notification when the substitution was made. If you're interested in how these text expansion apps can work, there's a recent podcast at the AppleVis site by someone who demos TextExpander on the Mac. • TextExpander for Mac: Type Short Abbreviations to Enter Text Snippets, Automatically Correct Misspelled Words, and More http://bit.ly/115xfRs (I'm giving you a shortened link to the podcast page, since the full address will invariably wrap and break) I actually use TextExpander Touch on my iOS devices more than TextExpander on my Mac. That's because I started using these devices back in 2009, when there were no Bluetooth keyboards, and definitely no Siri. Using the virtual keyboard for accented characters in languages other than English was painful. While TextExpander Touch on iOS only works with apps built to support it, any note-taking app worth its salt on iOS will have TextExpander support built in. There are also free trial demos for TextExpander on the Mac. Try the entry at the MacUpdate site: • TextExpander for Mac – On-the-fly typing accelerator http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/19147/textexpander The Mac App Store entry for aText is: • aText ($4.99) by Tran Ky Nam Software (but remember this hasn't been checked out in detail yet) https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/atext/id488566438?mt=12 Finally, if you do want more information on using the Character VIewer with VoiceOver, there are some extensive AppleVis forum posts by Nicolai Svendsen, who I think is still on this list, and myself. Here's a link to the forum discussion page in question: • using the special character itim pallet http://www.applevis.com/forum/os-x-mac-app-discussion/using-special-character-itim-pallet In case that link wraps, here's the shortened version: http://bit.ly/Xzbs5x HTH. I'll add the list of Special Symbols and Characters typed with Option key combinations below my signature. Cheers, Esther Special Symbols and Characters on the regular Mac Keyboard Categories: 1. Currency Symbols 2. Trademark and Copyright Symbols 3. Apple Symbol 4. Math and Greek Character Symbols 5. Copyediting, typesetting, and miscellaneous symbols 6. Punctuation marks: right and left quotation marks for English and other languages; inverted punctuation marks for Spanish Each entry gives the symbol followed by the descriptive name and the keyboard combination to press for the symbol. Additional comments about context for symbol usage may follow (in parentheses). Currency Symbols (in addition to $ = Shift+4) ¢ cents Option+4 £ pound Option+3 (on a British keyboard Option+3 is # -- the number or hash sign that is Shift+3 on U.S. keyboards, while Shift+3 is the pound sign) ¥ yen Option+y € Euro Option+Shift+2 (on a British keyboard this is Option+2) Trademark and Copyright Symbols © copyright Option+g ® registered Option+r ™ trademark Option+2 Apple Symbol apple Option+Shift+K Math and Greek Character Symbols ± plus-or-minus Option+Shift+Equals (Shift+Equals is plus) µ micro sign Option+m (Greek letter mu), units of microns π pi Option+p (Greek letter pi) √ square root Option+v ÷ divided by Option+/ (slash is key to left of right-hand shift key) · middle dot Option+Shift+9 (sign for multiplication) ≈ almost equals Option+x ≠ not equals Option+= (equals is key to right of delete key) ∞ infinity Option+5 ≤ less than or equal Option+comma (Shift+comma is the less than sign) ≥ greater than or equal Option+period (Shift+period is greater than) Å Angstrom sign Option+Shift+a (units of Angstroms) ∑ summation sign Option+w ° degree sign Option+Shift+8 ∂ partial differential Option+d (calculus) ∫ integral Option+b (calculus) Ω Omega Option+z (units of solid angle, calculus) Copyediting, typesetting, and miscellaneous symbols ‡ double dagger Option+Shift+7 (used for footnotes) ¶ pilcrow sign Option+7 (marks paragraphs) § section sign Option+6 (marks sections) • bullet sign Option+8 (marks list items) – en dash Option+hyphen (used for spans like pages 5–12, years 2009–2012, and for parenthetic remarks) — em dash Option+Shift+hyphen (used for parenthetic remarks, and to set off the source of quotations) Punctuation marks: right and left quotation marks for English and other languages; inverted punctuation marks for Spanish ‘ left single quotation mark Option+right bracket ’ right single quotation mark Option+Shift+right bracket “ left double quotation mark Option+left bracket ” right double quotation mark Option+Shift+left bracket « left pointing double angle quotation mark Option+backslash » right pointing double angle quotation mark Option+Shift+backslash ‹ single left pointing angle quotation mark Option+Shift+3 › single right pointing angle quotation mark Option+Shift+4 ¡ inverted exclamation mark Option+1 ¿ inverted question mark Option+Shift+slash (Shift+/ is question mark) … ellipsis Option+semi-colon On 13 Apr 2013, at 09:19, Catherine Turner wrote: > Hi, > > Has anyone ever entered characters by entering the unicode numbers? > To cut a long story short I have a need to do this and cannot get it > to work. I found some instructions about it and think I followed them > properly,and now I am suppose to be able to hold down the option key > and enter the required unicode numbers which should result in the > corresponding character being entered. What seems to be happening is > I hold down the option key and start typing numbers but it seems to > accept the very first digit which I enter without waiting for the > others, no matter how fast I type, and I am typing pretty quickly. > > What complicates matters, and is the reason I have the need for this > in the first place, is I am using a special keyboard adapted for one > handed typing and I am also using sticky keys. However I have tried > on the Macbook keyboard itself and with sticky keys switched off and > it does not seem to make a difference. I wonder if anyone has any > ideas? And if I cannot get this to work, is there a way I can put > certain characters somewhere in the menu so I can select them from > there when I need them? > > Thanks, > Catherine <--- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net ---> To reply to this post, please address your message to [email protected] You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Mac-Access forum at either the list's own dedicated web archive: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/index.html> or at the public Mail Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/>. Subscribe to the list's RSS feed from: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml> As the Mac Access Dot Net administrators, we do our very best to ensure that the Mac-Access E-Mal list remains malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free. However, this should in no way replace your own security strategy. We assume neither liability nor responsibility should something unpredictable happen. 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