I'm on WIN 7. I found that windows is using ANSI, not ASCII. So when I type ALT + 224 i get Ó, instead of α. To get α I have to manually copy it from the windows character map every time I want to use it. As you can imagine, this gets very tedious when I am trying to type in Attic Greek. Is there no combination to enter α? If not, is there some solution to this?
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Do you want to type in greek? – soandos Jul 15 '12 at 04:07
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I'm using windows and I get α. – cutrightjm Jul 15 '12 at 04:09
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Are you using WIN7? I might have been different on vista or xp. – irikkkkk Jul 15 '12 at 04:13
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@irikkkkk, what OS are you using? – soandos Jul 15 '12 at 04:41
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@soandros, windows 7 – irikkkkk Jul 15 '12 at 04:46
2 Answers
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As you have already discovered, the characters resulting from character codes between 0 and 255 depend entirely on the encoding that is used.
Windows doesn't use neither extended ASCII nor ANSI (usually Windows-1252); it actually depends on the application.
For example, Alt + (2, 2, 4) gives on my machine:
αin Notepad and on the command prompt.àin Google Chrome's omnibox, butαin its console and this very text area.In Notepad++,
awith ANSI,αwith UTF-8.
For a more consistent behavior, just use Unicode character codes:
The key combination Alt + (9, 4, 5) – or Alt + (+, 3, B, 1) if you set the registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Input Method\EnableHexNumpad to 1 – should result in a α in every application that supports that character.
Sadly, that isn't the case:
The decimal char code results in
▒in IE's address bar, while the hexadecimal one just beeps.The decimal char code results in
▒in Notepad++ with ANSI and¦with UTF-8.The hexadecimal char code results in
ain Notepad++ with ANSI andαwith UTF-8.
Summary
Set
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Input Method\EnableHexNumpadto1.Use Alt + (9, 4, 5) or Alt + (+, 3, B, 1) in applications with full Unicode support.
Fall back to trial and error in applications that lack full Unicode support.
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Have you tried prefixing with a `0`? Ie. `ALT-0224` gives `à` consistently (here), but `ALT-224` gives `Ó` (position 224 in DOS-Western Europe code page). [I don't have the hexadecimal entry set.] As I understand it the zero prefix forces interpretation as a Unicode code point. – Richard Jul 15 '12 at 07:45
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1The `0` is used to indicate a Unicode character when the char code is ambiguous, which is only needed between `0` and `255` with our code pages (although `0` - `127` will **always** be ASCII). `[Alt] - 0945` will result in `±`: Since the `0` is out of place here, the application falls back to non-Unicode and wraps at `256` (i.e., `256` is congruent to `0`, `257` to `2`, etc.). `±` char code is `177`, where `945 = 3 * 256 + 177`. – Dennis Jul 15 '12 at 12:20
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I found a solution that worked for me.
Initially, the "Current language for non-Unicode programs" was set to "English (United Kingdom)" on the computer in Region → Administrative settings; however, when I changed it to "English (United States)" and restarted the computer.
I finally started to get "α" when I hit Alt 224. No more "Ó". I've attached an image of the settings location.
