extended characters

[jens g.r. benthien]

We've had a discussion about typing extended characters in Xara X, because some of our friend had problems...

I've been used to Windows 2000 Pro, where I could - on my laptop - press the function key (fn) plus ALT plus four digits on the integrated Num Pad to type an extended character. Example:
On a desktop: ALT + 0183 on the Num Pad generated the middot · , ALT + 0149 the bullet •

However, with my new laptop that came with Windows XP Professional, this trick doesn't work anymore.

Because I use the middot and bullet as well as the Spanish ñ very often, I searched for a nice macro utility - a free one of course. Here is what I've found:

http://www.shortkeys.com/lite.htm

Limited to 35 macros / shortcuts in the free version, it comes in very handy for extended characters.

For example I've assigned the sequence -.- to generate the middot, ..- to generate the bullet character. It works! Just make sure you assign a very unusual shortkey, that means nothing that might be misinterpreted as normal shortcuts or text.

Maybe this little utility is something for your tasks as well?

[jens g.r. benthien]

We've had a discussion about typing extended characters in Xara X, because some of our friend had problems...

I've been used to Windows 2000 Pro, where I could - on my laptop - press the function key (fn) plus ALT plus four digits on the integrated Num Pad to type an extended character. Example:
On a desktop: ALT + 0183 on the Num Pad generated the middot · , ALT + 0149 the bullet •

However, with my new laptop that came with Windows XP Professional, this trick doesn't work anymore.

Because I use the middot and bullet as well as the Spanish ñ very often, I searched for a nice macro utility - a free one of course. Here is what I've found:

http://www.shortkeys.com/lite.htm

Limited to 35 macros / shortcuts in the free version, it comes in very handy for extended characters.

For example I've assigned the sequence -.- to generate the middot, ..- to generate the bullet character. It works! Just make sure you assign a very unusual shortkey, that means nothing that might be misinterpreted as normal shortcuts or text.

Maybe this little utility is something for your tasks as well?

[OklaEd]

Thanks for the tip Jens http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

I don't use extended characters much ... but Spanish is becoming a second language here. I'm starting to get requests for dual language projects http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif

[roman]

Unfortunately it doesn't allow accentuated characters as input (it says they aren't in the allowed characters) and also.. by pressing [SHIFT] + [+] 2 acccents are displayed and this utility does only scan keypresses not screen "text displays", still very nice utility

...and if you axctually switch off national keyboard and use [SHIFT] + [+] for accent or [=] and acharcter for long chars like á, Ã*.. then it actaully does what we ask xara for. however it's still just a hack to non-working support of accentuated characters in Xara which would require producing complete keyboard combinations for all accentuated characters produced with "dead-keys" and which would disable the possibility to write the characters directly without dead key (while are you in national keyboard mode, most of the characters are directly available spread in a standardised layout on the upper numeric row, and on non-alphabetic keys on the keyboard.)

[bcire68]

I just posted a project, where I used several extended characters, with german umlauts and other symbols (i.e. © and ü).

To make this work in Xara, I had to open word and insert symbols and then copy and paste them into Xara.

Might not a viable solution be to create an Insert Symbol screen that is accessable in the menu?

I know that this isn't what you are asking for, DMagician, It still interupts your work flow but it is better than going to an outside program to get the result you need.
This solution might be easier to code (though I don't pretend to know much about coding) and would give all of us access to the symbols we need.

Just a thought...

[Egg Bramhill]

I think I've mentioned this before, but I can't understand why XaraX doesn't use Xara3D's 'Text Options' for these extended character sets. It would be very useful for not only this, but also for Font matching.
I suggest this should be an option, not a compulsory text input system.
Egg

[raynerj]

Ummm... guys,

Egg has accidentily discovered how you can get your specialized font set to be used in xara x1. Type the specialized characters that you use in x3d5. Then copy and paste them as a background layer to your template file in xara. Whenever you need the specialized character it will be there on a non printing background layer.

No, it is not perfect but it can be an easy enough work around. See font examples...

[Egg Bramhill]

I often use Xara3D to try to match a font within a Logo. Import the logo into XaraX. Open Xara3D, type in the logo text in the 'Text Option' window, placing it just below the XaraX display. Then us the down arrow to compare outputs.

It's far easier than using XaraX's Font gallery, where you have to click on each font using the mouse, and only have the first few letters of the alphabet available as a comparison, often non matching the logo's text.

In Xara3D's 'Text Options' you can type in the exact word of the font your trying to match, then very quickly compare the XaraX Logo to that of the Xara3D display, by just using the UP / Down keyboard arrows.

This is far simpler than using the font gallery and the exact text is available for comparison.

Wouldn't this be a great addition to XaraX? Xara already has the code etc in Xara3D. If it was implemented, then font matching and extended characters would become a very simple operation.
Egg

[RAMWolff44]

Sounds really good to me Egg!! http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

Hey Charles................. http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

[Charles Moir]

I'm trying to understand the problem that's been mentioned here and elsewhere.

As far as I know (and can test) Xara X¹ does allow accented characters. It works using dead keys (for example press Ctrl+' (single quote) let go and type an A and you get � (which I note doesn't work in Outlook). You can also enter character codes the normal way. e.g. type Alt+0193 on a numeric keypad (and this works on my laptop as well) and you get the same accented � character. Finally you can use the built-in Character Map utility to select any unicode character you like and insert that, and that works as well with any of the thousands of possible unicode characters (Xara X is fully unicode compatible).

I just remember the numbers are a few useful characters such as Alt+0149 for • bullet, Alt+0169 for ©, Alt+0128 for € Euro symbol (although you can type that directly using AltGr+4 key on UK keyboards.) To produce curved quotes, as opposed to sexless ones, then Alt+0145, 0146, 0147 and 0148 ‘ ’ “ �. Oh, and finally of course to produce the superscript 1 such as Xara X¹ then the code is Alt+0185. (I'm assuming these will come out through this web based input form, but they may not).

So is there something else that is not working? if so can someone let me know what exactly the problem is and what Xara X is meant to do?