Special characters with Alt key

[drew]

I came up with a interesting technique today. Maybe someone else will find it useful.

I use special characters in my writing some times mainly ± ° Ø and some others as well so when I ran across an article about holding Alt and typing a numeric code for various characters I decided to find a way to do this with a single key on my TS. So here it is.

Ø = Holding Alt and typing 0216 on the key pad

To do this I created an event macro and added the macro to a key stroke

The macro is:

Code: Select all

Alt + Numpad0
Alt + Numpad2
Alt + Numpad1
Alt + Numpad6

from the xml it is

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<EventMacro postpone_expansion="true" macro_name="dia" tree_folder="Punctuation" lib="user">
  <KeyEvent keyCode="Numpad0" modifiers="LeftAlt" driverContext=" win" />
  <KeyEvent keyCode="Numpad2" modifiers="LeftAlt" driverContext=" win" />  
  <KeyEvent keyCode="Numpad1" modifiers="LeftAlt" driverContext=" win" />
  <KeyEvent keyCode="Numpad6" modifiers="LeftAlt" driverContext=" win" />
</EventMacro>

and this adds the event to a key on the PunctPad

Code: Select all

<MacroRefEvent macro_ref="dia" layoutContext=" punctpadon" />

There may be a more elegant way but this is the method I got to work.

[Minox]

good work!

[ivanw]

Yes, and I can't figure out a simpler method to do what you did.

Macros are there to encapsulate a sequence of events which you can put a name on. This makes it possible to reference it from any place where a single name is enough to tell everything necessary. Then, with the punctpad layout context, you have just extended the small collection of symbols defined by default for this category. That's one worthy addition to what you can't do with any keyboard but this one.

The next step to the best possible organization would be to export everything related into a library file. This would make it sharable as soon as somebody express some interest in importing your extensions into their own customization file.

Thanks for sharing.

[drew]

ivanw,
I have attempted to create library files in the past with the gesture editor and hopelessly screwed up my config file. Can you make a short tutorial for the process used to create and use the library files? It would make a good addition to the wiki. If it requires messing with the xml manually that is ok. I am getting more comfortable working with xml but have not quite figured it out all out.

Thanks for the comments.

[ivanw]

I planned to do that a long time ago but the Wiki was not very responsive then.

Thus, I will start with a series of screenshots on imageshack this week-end. Then, I will come here with a link to the new topic containing short explanations for each step.

I've already described my own organisation in this topic but I have to work at it to make it simple enough to call it a tutorial.

I'll try an entry in the Wiki after some discussion about the subject through this new imageshacked topic...

[ivanw]

Still can't upload any attachment to the Wiki...

In the mean time, I've used imageshack to host a few slides:

• Tutorial: Creating a customization library