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    Option-key losses in Mac OS X

    • Started by ds26gte
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    • Registered: 07-Aug-2007
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    03-Sep-2007 01:17:50#1 Option-key losses in Mac OS X

    After a couple months (I switched late June, 2007), Colemak is very comfortable indeed, regardless of speed -- kudos to its designer, and thanks to this forum for much useful info.

    I notice that some of the special symbols that Mac OS X allows in the QWERTY layout via the Option key are no longer available in the Colemak layout.  Is this a known issue?  For instance, Opt-t produces the dagger symbol in QWERTY.  In Colemak, Opt-t becomes the dead key for the acute accent, but the dagger-producing functionality does not seem to have been shifted to some other keychord: it appears to be simply lost.  I realize that any alternate keychords for these lost symbols may not work on an OS other than Mac OS X; nevertheless, installing the Colemak layout shouldn't disable *for Mac OS X users* the symbols that were already available to them in QWERTY, no?

    The following is, to my knowledge, the complete list of special symbols lost when shifting to Colemak on Mac OS X.  (The QWERTY keychords for them are shown in parentheses.)  While not all of these symbols would be equally missed, some are pretty useful.

    Of course, they may still be available, and I am just not looking in the right place.  (I've been using Keyboard Viewer.)   

    infinity (opt-5)
    thick bullet (opt-8)
    capital Sigma (opt-w)
    dagger (opt-t)
    lowercase pi (opt-p)
    partial d (opt-d)
    florin (opt-f)
    cap Delta (opt-j)
    negation (opt-l (ell))
    cap Omega (opt-z)
    root (opt-v)
    integral (opt-b)

    45-degree slash (opt-shift-1)
    fi ligature (opt-sh-5)
    fl ligature (opt-sh-6)
    double dagger (opt-sh-7)
    center dot (opt-sh-9)
    double comma (opt-sh-w)
    cap Pi (opt-sh-p)
    solid apple (opt-sh-k)
    diamond (opt-sh-v)

    [end of list]

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    03-Sep-2007 05:24:33#2 Re: Option-key losses in Mac OS X

    I've noticed that to, especially when discussing the Apple TV (I cannot type the actual name under Colemak).  Shai mentioned to me that he didn't have access to a Mac while making the .keylayout file for Colemak -- he seems to be a Linux user based on a few of the things he's said.

    You can probably use a keyboard layout editor like Ukelele to restore them.

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    • From: Houston, Texas
    • Registered: 03-Jan-2007
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    03-Sep-2007 05:54:52#3 Re: Option-key losses in Mac OS X

    I never noticed that before.  I guess that shows how often I use those special symbols. 

    It's going to take someone with an actual mac to fix this and a real need to spend the time. 

    It is so easy to momentarily switch back to qwerty to enter such symbols that you would need to be using them constantly to justify the time or just really like playing with that sort of thing.

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    • Shai
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    03-Sep-2007 09:20:51#4 Re: Option-key losses in Mac OS X

    The Colemak layout maps those keys for typing in other languages, as described in the Multilingual page. If you need any of these symbols, you can use Ukelele to add them to the layout.

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    • From: Viken, Norway
    • Registered: 13-Dec-2006
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    03-Sep-2007 13:57:25#5 Re: Option-key losses in Mac OS X

    The best thing might be to make some of them standard though. I use my own Norwegian Colemak (Win) layout, where all these characters are easily typable. For instance, AltGr+' produces dagger and AltGr+Shift+' double dagger; AltGr+6 is a hotkey for math symbols such as infinity etc.

    One need not go as far as I've done, because I've overdone it which will confuse most people I'm sure. But a few more symbols could well be part of the standard Colemak I feel?

    *** Learn Colemak in 2–5 steps with Tarmak! ***
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    03-Sep-2007 17:09:19#6 Re: Option-key losses in Mac OS X

    If the symbol "mu" is available via a standard Colemak keychord, so perhaps also should capital Omega.   Omega (for ohm) is the only character missing in the standard Colemak that prevents it from writing all the standard abbreviations of the SI units. 

    Colemak shouldn't lose an easy opportunity to be fully compliant with SI...

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    • From: Viken, Norway
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    04-Sep-2007 07:57:02#7 Re: Option-key losses in Mac OS X

    That's a good thought. The worst lack of the standard QWERTY as I see it would be the lack of the degree sign - the standard Colemak fixes that. Now the worst lack may possibly be the Ω.

    One thing to be aware of: The mu on the keyboard is - and should be - not the Greek one (μ; code point U+03bc) but the technical/symbol one (µ; U+oob5). Likewise, the ohm sign is not the greek Ω (U+03a9) but the technical Ω (U+2126). In this case however, Unicode implementation may be so-so for many fonts. Quite a lot of the code points on my own layout have very shoddy font implementation and this situation has not been improved noticeably in the last few years at least.

    Some of the symbols I've put in with relative success are: ⌂℮ƒ∫ℓ∏√∑∟Ω←↑→↓↔↕∂÷∞×≡•‼‽‣▪◦○ª•©¬▪f♀ɣfiijĸfl♂ƞº¶ƞ®ʪ™ƕƿ※ȝƹ·+☼☺▫ (phew!)  ;)

    *** Learn Colemak in 2–5 steps with Tarmak! ***
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