I'm on WIN 7. I found that windows is using ANSI, not ASCII. So when I type ALT + 224 i get Ó, instead of α. To get α I have to manually copy it from the windows character map every time I want to use it. As you can imagine, this gets very tedious when I am trying to type in Attic Greek. Is there no combination to enter α? If not, is there some solution to this?
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Do you want to type in greek?– soandosJul 15, 2012 at 4:07
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I'm using windows and I get α.– cutrightjmJul 15, 2012 at 4:09
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Are you using WIN7? I might have been different on vista or xp.– irikkkkkJul 15, 2012 at 4:13
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@irikkkkk, what OS are you using?– soandosJul 15, 2012 at 4:41
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@soandros, windows 7– irikkkkkJul 15, 2012 at 4:46
2 Answers
As you have already discovered, the characters resulting from character codes between 0
and 255
depend entirely on the encoding that is used.
Windows doesn't use neither extended ASCII nor ANSI (usually Windows-1252); it actually depends on the application.
For example, Alt + (2, 2, 4) gives on my machine:
α
in Notepad and on the command prompt.à
in Google Chrome's omnibox, butα
in its console and this very text area.In Notepad++,
a
with ANSI,α
with UTF-8.
For a more consistent behavior, just use Unicode character codes:
The key combination Alt + (9, 4, 5) – or Alt + (+, 3, B, 1) if you set the registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Input Method\EnableHexNumpad
to 1
– should result in a α
in every application that supports that character.
Sadly, that isn't the case:
The decimal char code results in
▒
in IE's address bar, while the hexadecimal one just beeps.The decimal char code results in
▒
in Notepad++ with ANSI and¦
with UTF-8.The hexadecimal char code results in
a
in Notepad++ with ANSI andα
with UTF-8.
Summary
Set
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Input Method\EnableHexNumpad
to1
.Use Alt + (9, 4, 5) or Alt + (+, 3, B, 1) in applications with full Unicode support.
Fall back to trial and error in applications that lack full Unicode support.
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Have you tried prefixing with a
0
? Ie.ALT-0224
givesà
consistently (here), butALT-224
givesÓ
(position 224 in DOS-Western Europe code page). [I don't have the hexadecimal entry set.] As I understand it the zero prefix forces interpretation as a Unicode code point.– RichardJul 15, 2012 at 7:45 -
1The
0
is used to indicate a Unicode character when the char code is ambiguous, which is only needed between0
and255
with our code pages (although0
-127
will always be ASCII).[Alt] - 0945
will result in±
: Since the0
is out of place here, the application falls back to non-Unicode and wraps at256
(i.e.,256
is congruent to0
,257
to2
, etc.).±
char code is177
, where945 = 3 * 256 + 177
.– DennisJul 15, 2012 at 12:20
I found a solution that worked for me.
Initially, the "Current language for non-Unicode programs" was set to "English (United Kingdom)" on the computer in Region → Administrative settings
; however, when I changed it to "English (United States)" and restarted the computer.
I finally started to get "α" when I hit Alt 224. No more "Ó". I've attached an image of the settings location.