alt codes not working

George Reschke

I like to use alt codes for bullets and notice some don’t work like they do in Windows. For example alt+8 just gives me a ? with a box around it but should be a symbol like this ◘. Any ideas how to fix this? I have encoding set to UTF-8.

guy038

Hello, George Reschke,

It works nice, in my 6.9.1 local N++ configuration :-)) Just :

Press the ALT key
Type a number between 1 and 31, on your numeric keyboard, without any leading zero !
Release the ALT key

You’ll obtain the 31 following characters, below :

☺ ☻ ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ • ◘ ○ ◙ ♂ ♀ ♪ ♫ ☼ ► ◄ ↕ ‼ ¶ § ▬ ↨ ↑ ↓ → ← ∟ ↔ ▲ ▼

IMPORTANT :

Your file must have a Unicode encoding, that is to say, one of the four following encodings :

UTF-8
UTF-8 BOM
UCS-2 BE BOM
UCS-2 LE BOM

On the other hand, keep in mind that, with similar gestures :

ALT + a number n, from 001 to 255, writes the character, of code n, from the appropriate Windows OEM Code page, on your system. Refer to the link, below :

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/goglobal/bb964655

For instance, as I’m French, it’s the 850 (Multilingual Latin I)

ALT + a number n, from 0001 to 0255, writes the character, of code n, from the appropriate Windows SBCS Code page, on your system. Refer to the link, below :

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/goglobal/bb964654,

Again, on my system, it’s the 1252(Latin I) code page. You can see all the characters of this table, by selecting, in N++, the menu option Edit - Character Panel !

You may, also, have a glance to an other post, on SourceForge, written on February 2015, about that topic :

https://sourceforge.net/p/notepad-plus/discussion/331753/thread/e5b72494/#b5c1

Best Regards,

guy038

George Reschke

guy038, you nailed it. It was my font which was pointed out in the last link in your post. Nice job and much appreciated.

George

Thempleton Aart

@George Reschke

In Npp, guy038’s solution works from decimal char code 1 up to 32 only.
The subsequent characters, up from code 33, have been substituted by various npp control codes.
Look at this two alternative solutions I’m using with success instead:
https://notepad-plus-plus.org/community/topic/11609/how-to-enter-character-codes

Cheers
Thempleton Aart

guy038

Hello, George Reschke, Thempleton Aart, Claudia, and All,

@Thempleton-Aart :

I’m a bit confused because, the two methods, described in my previous post, for getting characters, with code between 1 and 255, do work on my N++ configuration ! Of course, when I wrote the expression “ALT + a number n, from …”, there’s no need to press on the numeric pad key +. That’s just a shortcut for the word and !

Anyway, many thanks for giving the link below :

https://notepad-plus-plus.org/community/topic/11609/how-to-enter-character-codes/2

Indeed, because the Claudia Franck’s method, about adding a registry entry, works perfectly well :-)). That’s incredible : although involved, since more than 30 years, with computer science, I’ve never heard about that third way to get any Unicode character !!

I found out, on Wikipedia, these three interesting links, below, about all the Input methods :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_input

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_input#Hexadecimal_code_input

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt_code

So, once the Claudia’s registry trick realized, on your system, the third and general method for getting any Unicode character, with code-point between 0001 and ffff, is :

Hold down the ALT key
Type the + key, on the NUMERIC keypad
Type the hexadecimal code-point of the character, using the 0 to 9 keys, on the numeric keypad AND/OR the normal a to f keys, of the alphanumeric keypad
Release the ALT key

=> The appropriate character is written, at cursor location, in your current file

NOTES :

You must lock the numeric keypad in “number-mode” ( the NumLock indicator is active and switched on )
Of course, the current N++ font must be able to reproduce the glyph of these input characters !
All the characters, with code-point outside the Basic Multilingual Plane ( between \x10000 and \x10ffff ) CANNOT be obtained, from within Notepad++, with this method :-((

EXAMPLES, by increasing Unicode code-point :

( IMPORTANT : the Courrier New font must be selected, for the N++ Default Style style !! )

ALT , + , 0 , 0 , 0 and 1 writes the Start of Heading control character SOH,
ALT , + , 0 , 0 , 9 and a writes the Single Character Introducer control character SCI,
ALT , + , 0 , 0 , a and e writes the Registered sign, ®
ALT , + , 0 , 1 , 6 and 6 writes the Latin Capital letter T with Stroke, Ŧ
ALT , + , 0 , 3 , a and 6 writes the Greek Capital letter Phi, Φ
ALT , + , 0 , 4 , 4 and e writes the Cyrillic Small letter Yu, ю
ALT , + , 2 , 0 , 3 and 0 writes the Per Mille sign, ‰
ALT , + , 2 , 0 , 3 and c writes the Double Exclamation Mark symbol, ‼
ALT , + , 2 , 0 , a and 7 writes the Spanish Peseta sign, ₧
ALT , + , 2 , 0 , a and c writes the Euro sign, €
ALT , + , 2 , 1 , 5 and e writes the Fraction Seven Eights symbol, ⅞
ALT , + , 2 , 2 , 1 and e writes the Infinity symbol, ∞
ALT , + , 2 , 5 , 6 and c writes the Double Vertical and Horizontal Box drawing symbol, ╬
ALT , + , 2 , 5 , b and a writes the Black Right-Pointing Pointer symbol, ►
ALT , + , 2 , 6 , 6 and 3 writes the Black Club Suit symbol, ♣
ALT , + , f , 0 , 0 and 2 writes the Latin Small Ligature fl, 
ALT , + , f , b , 3 and c writes the Hebrew letter Lamed with Dagesh, לּ
ALT , + , f , b , 6 and a writes the Arabic letter Veh Isolated Form, ﭪ
ALT , + , f , f , f and f writes the Last NON character of the BMP, according to its UTF-8 syntax, xEF xBF xBF

Best Regards,

guy038