i_la_rocca

Hello,

Where do I find a list of keys to access symbols in text, for example, the
copyright symbol or the registration symbol?

Thanks!

welles_goodrich

What OS? Key Caps is a utility which may be in your Utilities folder and will show you simple things like ® (Option + r) or © (Option + g).

Another alternative is...

You can see what all the characters on your keyboard look like in each font installed on your computer.
1. Choose Apple menu > System Preferences and click International.
2. Click Input Menu, then select the checkbox next to Keyboard Viewer.
3. Choose Show Keyboard Viewer from the input menu on the right side of the menu bar (the one that looks like a flag or alphabetical character).

The Keyboard Viewer shows the characters for your keyboard (or if you've selected a different keyboard layout or input method in the input menu, for the selected keyboard layout). For example, if U.S. is chosen at the top of the input menu, you see the characters that appear on a U.S. keyboard in the Keyboard Viewer. For more information about keyboard layouts and input methods, click "Tell me more."
4. To see what characters look like in other fonts, choose another font from the Font menu.

To type in that font, choose the font from the font menu in the application you want to write in.

By default, the Keyboard Viewer displays the lowercase characters and numbers. To see the uppercase characters and the symbols above the numbers, press the Shift key.

i_la_rocca

Thanks for the response.
I am a bit confused.
I am using OS 10.3.4
and Photoshop (I have both 7.0 and CS).
I would like to use an accent over a letter "i"
so that would change the character completely
because there would not be a dot.
I did go into System prefs
but I don't know how to access these characters
from within PS.

thanks again

I'm not sure where you can see a list of these options, if you don't have one handy that came with your OS guide. Accents over characters are easy on the Mac OS but not exactly intuitive. To put an accent over a character you need to type a code first, which tells the keyboard that the next character typed will be accented. For the í, for instance, you type option-e. Nothing appears. Then you type the i. It will show up with an accent. You can get all the standard accents and diacritical marks this way (with different codes, of course).

Unless OSX has messed up this system, in which case someone else can correct me.

The registration or copyright symbols are different, since they're simple character options which can be typed without a command pre-code, and can be seen in Key Caps.

i_la_rocca

Thanks so much,
however, this (option e before typing i)
doesn't seem to work in
OS X (10.3.4).
Anybody else know?

Thanks again.

odysseus

It seems to work just fine here: Photoshop 8.0, same OS version.

--
Odysseus

ramón_g_castañeda

It does work in 10.3.4., if you have the US standard keyboard selected

Press the Option and the E keys simultaneously, then release them and press i. You'll get í. áéíóú ÁÉÍÓÚ. <--- I just typed all that using the US keyboard in 10.3.4 with the Option E combination.

I happen to use a custom software keyboard layout resource I created myself to type all so-called “special” characters much faster. If you do that a lot, you should consider using the Spanish, Italian or French keyboard layouts that come with OS X (built in).

welles_goodrich

I La Rocca,

Well those were two good answers (Ramón knows more about keyboards and languages than anyone who regularly frequents this board).

If you are going to use many symbols available in regular fonts, symbol fonts, dingbats, or dingfonts regularly, you might consider PopChar X.

<http://www.macility.com/products/popcharx/>

It's a great utility which I wouldn't be without.

ann_shelbourne

OSX includes a free application: Character Palette.

You need to go into System Preferences/International/Input
to find it. Check it and it will then be available when you click on your national flag in the top bar.

In the Character Palette, click on the character you want to use and click the "Insert with Font" button.

Beware that it doesn't work with all characters in extended OTF character sets or with some Pi fonts.