TUAW Tip: Character building with Mac OS X

I've previously demonstrated how to use LaTeXiT to create and display complex math formulas and other symbols, and thank you readers for the additional recommendations!

While providing a means to display almost every imaginable existing symbol or character, a LaTeX-based solution may prove too complex and unnecessary for some. For the less "mathletic," Mac OS X's built-in character viewer is one of the easier ways to display characters of all sorts.

To enable the character viewer, open Mac OS X's System Preferences and select the "Language & Text" icon. Once there, click on the "Input Sources" tab and place a checkmark next to the "Keyboard & Character Viewer" box and "Show input menu in menu bar" box. The Keyboard & Character Viewer is now accessible on your menu bar.

Now, displaying special characters on your document, email, or whatever it is you're working on is just a drag and drop away.

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Source: http://www.tuaw.com/2009/08/18/using-latexit-to-display-math…

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I've previously demonstrated how to use LaTeXiT to create and display complex math formulas and other symbols, and thank you readers for...

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Jeff

I'm using 10.5.8 and i don't see a Language and Text icon.

January 22 2010 at 5:21 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

matt b

If you use a lot of Greek characters for math and science writing -- and you don't want to use Symbol, which doesn't go well with fonts that aren't Times New Roman -- then you have to do a little work:

Activate the Greek keyboard in system preferences and switch to it via the flag icon on the menu bar. This will activate the extra greek characters in all the fonts that carry them (note that your body text font may not so you'll still have to change fonts within your document). Type your characters, then switch back to the US keyboard. You may want to define some keyboard shortcuts for this.

January 22 2010 at 10:27 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

HandyMac

And btw, it's called the Character Palette in 10.5 and previous versions of OS X.

January 21 2010 at 10:52 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Gazmik Fizzwidget

And for those less inclined towards superfluous trips to System Preferences, the built-in "Special Characters..." command in the Edit menu of most applications and its (common, but not quite universal) Command-Option-T keyboard shortcut are two of the even easier ways to display characters of all sorts.

January 21 2010 at 9:06 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply