

This empowers you to quickly gain access to a language rather than having to search through the entire Unicode set like you would in Character Map. Aside from this, you get to search through each different block of the Unicode character set, allowing you to individually browse languages’ characters. Perhaps one of the most extensive character maps, BabelMap has 110,000 characters, making use of the most recent Unicode standards. Over time, developers have decided to make alternatives and extensions that make life more convenient. However, it may be annoying to have to look through all of the characters to try to find what you’re looking for. For this reason, Microsoft Windows includes a character map application in its Accessories menu. Writing in other languages, especially those in the East, is very difficult using a US keyboard layout. Posted in: Apple, How to, Keyboard shortcuts, Mac OS.We live in an international Internet, one in which many people speak a large number of languages. It doesn’t show as many symbols as the Characters palette, but most of the commonly used ones are there and it’s a handy option if you want to memorise the three or four you use regularly. Once installed, this displays a keyboard map with all keyboard-accessible characters and symbols.

You can then browse through various symbols and special characters, and simply double-click any one to insert it into your current document.Ī quicker option is to use the OptionAlt Widget. The easiest is to display the Mac OS Characters palette – just press + +, or + +. There are a few options for quickly inserting symbols like ®, π and © into a document, though. Mac OS doesn’t have a similar tool – or rather, it doesn’t have one that’s so easily accessible. Typing a character that doesn’t have its own key on the keyboard is easy in Windows – you can just use the Windows Character Map tool.
