No NumLock key? Problem solved! Here’s the fix.

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PUBLIC DEFENDER By Brian Livingston Most laptop makers are now leaving the NumLock key out of their smaller notebooks. That’s a disaster for people wh
[See the full post at: No NumLock key? Problem solved! Here’s the fix.]

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Patricia Grace, AusJohn, fisher75, ibe98765, Ricard, Norio, DLivesInTexas, dvhirst865, lmacri, geekdom

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I don’t understand why the article includes a download link for AutoHotkey 2.0.2 pointing to OlderGeeks.com rather than to AutoHotkey‘s own website, where a plethora of help and support is also available.

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dvhirst865

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Rick Corbett wrote:

I don’t understand why the article includes a download link … to OlderGeeks.com

Because we have a relationship with them. We know how zealous the McElveens are about assuring the safety of downloaded software and thus consider using those links a comfort to those tentative about freeware. OG always provides the author’s site (if one remains), so anyone can trace back to it.

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Patricia Grace, Norio

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Will Fastie wrote:

Because we have a relationship with them.

Whilst I appreciate that, my concern is that the choice of OlderGeeks.com over AutoHotkey Foundation LLC for the download inadvertently makes it more difficult for new users of AutoHotkey.

The download link on the AutoHotkey foundation website links to a setup.exe file which helps new users by offering choices (including portable installation, if wanted), installs the appropriate version of AutoHotkey automatically and provides an info dashboard.

By comparison, the download link on OlderGeeks.com is to a ZIP file with no information about how to use it.

 

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Windows 10 tip: Access symbols, emojis, and other special characters

Entering special characters, including foreign currency symbols, fractions, and emoji, is a cumbersome task on most physical keyboards. Use this hidden Windows 10 option to open an on-screen keyboard that puts all those characters at your fingertips…

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Uh, Brian, please don’t tell my Unicomp (Part #: UB4TP4A) keyboard that it’s not a US-International keyboard. It will get very upset, ’cause it is.

Seriously, I switched to US-International layouts years ago, because, well, of the additional characters available on it, that aren’t on the standard keyboard. I hope to never have to return to the US standard keyboard layout……

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This is an excellent, highly useful article.  Thanks, also, for the shout-out for AHK, it’s a gem.

DVH

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A method, which I use, is to open: https://www.alt-codes.net/ within a browser tab and leave it open then just click on the symbol required and paste to the document. There are many symbols to use on this site with codes available.
Useful if you prefer using a mouse over a touchpad with no app/ program required. ♥ ♫ ♪

Keeping IT Lean, Clean and Mean!

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Elly, SueW, DLivesInTexas

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This one is a fascinating topic.  I find it interesting that the only European language that uses Latin scripting and no diacritical characters (or other special characters) is US English.  And of course, many of the standards we work with come from American development

My employer works in a multi-lingual environment, and we do some amount of work with bootable media that is password-protected.  We’ve discovered that the only non-alphanumeric character that is usable for a password on any computer is physical space.  Everything else may vary in location, depending on language.  I believe that comes from BIOS that assume US English until a language-specific keyboard driver is loaded.

One other possible use of special characters would be passwords.  Not all password systems will accept 8-bit ASCII, and as noted, if you have a keyboard that doesn’t have a NumLock, that’s a problem, but if you put something like ¢ in a password, that’s going to make it far more difficult to crack a password, where both brute-force and dictionary attacks probably don’t anticipate values above ASCII 127.

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I’ve been using WinCompose (https://github.com/samhocevar/wincompose), which has many intuitive features, both portable and installer modes, and an assignable compose key (default is the right <Alt> key).  However, this looks like it might be easier to use, especially as I am familiar with AutoHotKey — thanks, Brian!

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geekdom

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This is brilliant, and I’ll use it for any of my programs other than WordPerfect.

I will note that WordPerfect has a similar method built in for special characters, using most of the same combinations as your Quick Keys, triggered by the Ctrl-W keystroke — one of the many reasons that I vastly prefer WordPerfect over MS Word.

I may, however, remap that feature from Ctrl-W to your Backquote key, which seems much easier to type in a line of text.

(One minor advantage to Word is the Shift-Enter keystroke for a line break, which requires Ctrl-Shift-L in WordPerfect. WordPerfect can remap most keystrokes, but NOT those using Enter. But this also has been fixed with the “remarkable AutoHotKey”, which can.)

Thank you.

 

Win 7 Pro, 64-Bit, Group B ESU,Ivy Bridge i3-3110M, 2.4GHz, 4GB, XP Mode VM, WordPerfect

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AHK is great, but a real simple, easy to use key remapper [only uses the registry] is

https://www.randyrants.com/category/sharpkeys/

https://github.com/randyrants/sharpkeys

I use it to add a “right click” key on my laptop.

 

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Rick Corbett wrote:

Whilst I appreciate that

I prefer to “front” freeware with a reliable source. I think there are basically three kinds of original sources — ones you can absolutely trust because you have familiarity; ones whose Web presence is, shall we say, marginal; and ones that no longer exist.

OlderGeeks injects a level of trust in them all.

Besides, our audience is savvy enough to look at these things carefully. I dare say that most will find the resources at the AHK site. After all, we did provide a link to the AHK documentation at the AHK site in the article.

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Will Fastie wrote:

Rick Corbett wrote:

Whilst I appreciate that

I prefer to “front” freeware with a reliable source. I think there are basically three kinds of original sources — ones you can absolutely trust because you have familiarity; ones whose Web presence is, shall we say, marginal; and ones that no longer exist.

OlderGeeks injects a level of trust in them all.

Besides, our audience is savvy enough to look at these things carefully. I dare say that most will find the resources at the AHK site. After all, we did provide a link to the AHK documentation at the AHK site in the article.

Maybe I am not old enough or geeky enough, but I have never heard of OlderGeeks before. (I know MajorGeeks)

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I use a very old freeware program from a now apparently defunct website called Map Of Char.  I put the link to the program in my taskbar quick launch area (yes, I still use and love QL!).  When I need a special char, like a degree symbol ° (Alt-0176), I open the program, click on the symbol and it shows me the Alt-number combo I need to enter.  Easy peasy.

 

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I take exception to Brian’s remarks that the WinKey + period shortcut is a toy. I use it to enter maths symbols into my text editors like Notepad++. The dinosaur-era CharMap doesn’t cut it – I just can’t select, copy and paste a Greek character into a text editor.

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Save_Us_from_MS wrote:

Maybe I am not old enough or geeky enough, but I have never heard of OlderGeeks before. (I know MajorGeeks)

OlderGeeks is, IMO, a really-well curated repository of all those teeny-weeny utilities you never knew you needed… until you tried them and suddenly thought – why didn’t I know about this before?

For example, I never knew about a streaming audio service fronted by a UI called Pocket Radio Player… but I now use it almost every day to listen to MY favourite sounds.

I must admit that I avoid MajorGeeks as it continues to play fast and loose with the efforts of others without any accreditation. Just search for MajorGeeks here on AskWoody… no doubt my previous comments (rants) will surface, for example: Why I never link to MajorGeeks. It’s just me… I believe in crediting the original authors of code/reg/whatever that I use as a basis for my own (poor) efforts. 🙂

Hope this helps…

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Elly, Save_Us_from_MS, Norio

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Rick Corbett wrote:

Why I never link to MajorGeeks

accesses a thread in Moderator Forum and that thread is not available if logged out or a regular user.

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I found the article really interesting, and would like to use the Auto Hotkey system on a laptop where I don’t have the luxury of a numeric keypad.

However, I’m a little lost.

I mainly have a need for this type of utility for adding Alt-0xxx symbols (such as Alt-0179 °, Alt-0149 •, etc.) to documents, but there aren’t any such examples in Brian’s .ahk file.

Would some kind soul be able to give me a couple of examples of how I can accomplish this?

 

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Thank you for your interest. There is a blue-and-tan “cheat sheet” in the article and in the downloadable ZIP file. It shows most of the glyphs that Brian’s Quick Keys can produce. To enter the degree and bullet symbols you mentioned, see the following line in the cheat sheet:

Backquote @ a A b or o — to enter å Å (Aring) • ° (degree)

The AutoHotKeys script uses Unicode hex values, not the Alt+nnnn system that Windows used on the numeric keypad. I think Backquote @ o is easier to remember to make a degree symbol than Alt+0176. I selected the “@” symbol for this key sequence because it is round, like the circular shapes of the Aring, bullet, and degree characters.

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AusJohn

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Thank you Brian, that’s just the ‘nudge’ that I needed.

Now to put it into practice with my most used symbols!

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geekdom wrote:

accesses a thread in Moderator Forum and that thread is not available if logged out or a regular user.

You’re absolutely correct. My mistake.

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I have used Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator (aka MSKLC) (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=102134) to program a similar set of dead keys / key-combinations.

MSKLC generates a Keyboard Layout setup/DLL that one then installs in the Language section of the Windows Settings. It works at the level of the keyboard and is thus accessible to all software.

Attached: source and documentation files.

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SueW

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Thanks for the suggestion.

I don’t think I will try it at the moment, having had some other useful suggestions, but will keep it in mind should I need something extra in the future.

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AusJohn wrote:

Would some kind soul be able to give me a couple of examples of how I can accomplish this?

I have difficulty remembering hotstrings so I use flyingDman‘s AutoHotkey script that displays a character map onscreen to select characters. I’ve highlit the two you mentioned:

I’ve attached the AHK script as a ZIP file in case of any issues with forum encoding. The AHK script is as follows:

var = ÀÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÑÒÓÔŒÕÖØÙÚÛÜßàáâãäåæçèéêëìíîïñòóôœõöøùúûüÿ¿¡«»§¶†‡•-–—™©®¢€¥££¤aß?de??????µ???p?s?t?f???G?T???SF?O???v-±8˜?=?==×·÷?'??‰°?ø?n?????¬???????????°0123456789°¹²³45678?

f12::
w:=20, cnt := 14, arr := strsplit(var)
gui, new
gui, -caption
gui, margin, 0,0
gui, font, s10
loop,% arr.count()
{
x := mod((a_index - 1),cnt) * w, y := floor((a_index - 1)/ cnt) * w
gui, add, text, x%x% y%y% w%w% h%w% center vz%a_index% ginsert,% arr[a_index]
}
gui, show
return

insert:
gui,submit
send % arr[substr(A_GuiControl,2)]
return

esc::
exitapp

Note that once you run the script, F12 is used to invoke the character map GUI and ESC to dismiss the dialog. (Both these hotkeys can be changed.) The script can be used with Notepad, Word, etc… anywhere that accepts character input.

Basically, the first line of the script creates an array then this array is looped through to create the GUI. Amend the first line if you only need a few special characters.

Note: This script was written long before AutoHotkey 2.0 was released. I’m still using AutoHotkey 1.1.

Hope this helps…

AHK_CharMap

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Thanks for the suggestion.

Should I need something extra in the future I’ll keep it in mind.

At the moment, however, I think I’ve got more than enough to occupy my poor ageing brain.

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Thanks! That looks like just what I need.

I’ll give it a try and see how I go. Can’t be too difficult. 🙂

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You could also just use PowerToys to remap another key to be the NumLock key.

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[Will Fastie]

There is an error in the column. Next to the “cheat sheet” image under the heading “The fix is here …”, a parenthetical states:

from a command line, enter shell:startup to open the Startup folder

The correct procedure is to enter shell:startup in the Windows Run dialog, which as we all know can be launched in two ways:

• Right-clicking the Start button and selecting Run from the menu, or
• Using the shortcut Winkey+R.

Then enter shell:startup and press Enter. The currently logged-in user’s startup folder will open, into which you can copy the .ahk script. If you wish to add the script for all users of the PC, enter shell:common startup instead.

This is an editing error on my part, for which I take full responsibility. The online version Brian’s column will be corrected in due course.

• This reply was modified 1 week, 5 days ago by Will Fastie. Reason: Typo

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Will Fastie wrote:

enter shell:common statup instead.

Presumably that’s just a typo; I imagine it should be:

shell:common startup

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Will Fastie

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AusJohn wrote:

Presumably that’s just a typo;

Ack!

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