Filed under: OS, Odds and ends
TUAW Tip: a shortcut to the Character Palette
I'm not the world's most patriotic Englishman, and I'm also not keen on allowing icons to fill up my Mac's menu bar unless strictly necessary.
That's why I don't let the Input Menu flag hog space up there; one of the first things I do on a fresh Mac system is remove it (by unchecking the "Show input menu in menu bar" box in the Input Menu tab of the International preferences pane).
That said, there are occasions when I wish I had quick access to the Character Palette - which can normally only be reached via the Input Menu. Grrr.
Which is why I dug around online to find a script that would call up the Character Palette for me, and saved it as an application, and Bob's your uncle. Now I can get to the Character Palette, via Spotlight, by typing "Command+Space CHAR return". Excellent.
You can get the script from this page on Mac OS X Hints. Click the "Get this script" thingy and it will open in Script Editor. Click Compile, then Run, just to check it does what you want - then Save As... an app, or a script if you prefer.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Galley said 11:27AM on 7-31-2008
If only English used accented characters:
http://the_english_dept.tripod.com/eng.html
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Metryq said 11:46AM on 7-31-2008
Oh, yes, I can see how much faster that is over keeping one tiny icon in the menu bar... At that point it would be easier to remember the keystrokes for the special characters one needs.
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d said 11:53AM on 7-31-2008
I need the character palette very rarely, so I usually access it under the Edit menu in most apps. I know this works in Leopard. There's also a widget called Character Palette which copies the character or the HTML for that character to the clipboard. It doesn't have all characters I don't think, but it works well. My most commonly used characters are placed in a sticky.
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d said 11:56AM on 7-31-2008
Oh, and another way to remove the icon (which I was very happy to find, because it works with iStat menus to) is simply hold down the command key and drag it around or out like a Dock icon.
Matt said 11:57AM on 7-31-2008
cmd+alt+t works for me on Leopard
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stooky said 6:29PM on 7-31-2008
I use cmd+alt+t as well, but what I really would like to know is how to invoke the keyboardoverview (hope that is understandable - I am german ;) ) that little window that is showing the keyboard wich is normally found in menubar flag right next to the char palette.
Mike said 11:59AM on 7-31-2008
There's a keyboard/mouse preference, "show or hide the Character Palette," normally set to cmd-opt-t.
isn't that easier than using spotlight?
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chesama said 12:00PM on 7-31-2008
uhm, isn't it disabled by default?
anyway, quicksilver will let you bring up the palette.
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Ben said 12:24PM on 7-31-2008
I wish spotlight would have a quick system for entering these characters. Maybe "command-space" then ";" and then some short name for the character. It could then paste it into the running app. I'm sure this is possible with some of the other accelerators (e.g. Quicksilverish) but it would be nice built in.
Some days I miss the alt-4-number thing that Windows has for Unicode characters. :-P
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Babyfett said 12:35PM on 7-31-2008
This seems like one of my father's old "long cuts" - short cuts that take longer and are more difficult than the usual route. I'll stick with the ease of the menu bar icon.
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Janti Shawash said 12:39PM on 7-31-2008
I rarely access the character pallet, but I know it can be ticked on/off from within the keyboard/mouse preferences.
My brother recently got himself a MacBook and we can't figure out why the tick box and the option to select or de-select the Character pallet is un-available! Any Ideas on how this can be fixed?
Currently he uses Pop-char, but I don't see the need to buy extra software to run something that’s built-in to OSX.
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sporobolus said 1:02PM on 7-31-2008
no, that's not easier to remember; unless i use it a lot (or unless i used it a lot 15 years ago when i memorized most of the individual character shortcuts) a keyboard shortcut can be hard to remember
since my brain is also stuffed with Latin names of plants, facts about the zoning code, etc., i find it easier to remember characteristics than names, and to do a search based on such; i use Quicksilver, sometimes Spotlight, group non-Apple apps into functional-area subfolders and add Spotlight comments to apps with useless names (like iRatchet); all so i can quickly find what i need without necessarily remembering its name or location
in the case of this tip i'm skipping the script and simply aliasing the hidden apps in to a place that Quicksilver indexes -- see http://www.macosxhints.com/comment.php?mode=view&cid=65490 ... my MBP menu bar gets some need breathing room!
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sporobolus said 1:04PM on 7-31-2008
(that was @Mike)
shawn said 1:02PM on 7-31-2008
I have a question, where can I find a page or doc with the keystrokes to type some of those characters? For instance, how can I type a smiley face in an email? The only thing I know how to do is the damn symbol!
Help please.
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Rich said 2:14PM on 7-31-2008
In the same menu mentioned in the OP. [Keyboard Viewer].
Riddle said 3:57PM on 7-31-2008
I use Opt+Cmd+T and to change keyboard layout from Polish to English (US) I use pre-defined shortcut Cmd+F15. It’s useful when you have to type proper quotation marks: “”. :)
And I don’t like the flag icon neither.
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Torsten said 4:08PM on 7-31-2008
cmd-opt-t seems to be enabled by default (I'm using Leopard); on my Mac it works without changing preferences. I didn't know about this option. But does anyone know, if and how it is possible to change between the different keyboards by shortcut? Using the character palette and inserting letters by mouseclick is horrible. Better would be a possibility to insert foreign language characters by shortcut as I did it in MS Word before switching to the Mac. Any hints?
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David Sinclair said 5:26PM on 7-31-2008
The keyboard system menu isn't required. The OS automatically adds a Special Characters... command to the Edit menu (with the keyboard equivalent Cmd-Option-T) which shows the character palette.
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Amit said 1:27PM on 9-15-2008
Option-Command-T works in almost every application except Finder.
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