News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

February 22, 2007

tips

How OS X can help you build character

Posted Feb. 22, ’07, 9:22 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Tips

Character PaletteSo once up a time there was this snowman: ☃. He loved (♥) playing chess (♕) when it rained (☂). That was, until one day the sun came out (☀) and he melted away (♨). Fortunately, though, snowmen are recyclable (♻), so he eventually turned back into snow (❄) and lived happily ever after (☺). The end.

Now that storytime is over, you’re probably wondering about my point. Glad you asked. Most people know that OS X’s font and text capabilities are pretty robust, but if you haven’t taken the time to check out the Character Palette, you’re really missing out. A friend of mine asked me if there was an easy way to insert special ASCII characters and I sent him palette-wards via the International preference pane, but it turns out there’s a far easier way.

Most OS X apps let you summon the palette via the Edit menu, under Special Characters (in many cases, you can hit command-option-t). In order to get the most out of the palette, make sure you’ve expanded both the Character Info and Font Variation sections by clicking the disclosure triangles next to their names. The former will give you a zoomed in view of the character you’ve chosen (which you can drag and drop into any text field), as well as related characters. The latter lets you compare the symbol in a variety of fonts.

Below that, you’ll also find an action menu and a search field. The search field is especially useful. Looking for a crazy celestial symbol? Just type “star” in the field, and up will pop a list of all the star characters in your fonts; double click the one you want and it’ll zoom right to it. Then all you have to do is hit insert or drag and drop it.

Honestly, that’s really just skimming the surface of what the Character Palette can do. You can create a set of favorites for frequently used characters, use it as a foreign language reference (especially handy for Asian languages), even generate Braille patterns—which are probably less useful on a computer monitor, but still pretty nifty.


3 Comments

Ostadan said:

It is technically incorrect to refer to these unusual characters as 'special ASCII characters'; the reason that they are not trivial to type is precisely that they are not covered by the ASCII character set.

February 22, 2007 10:13 AM
evariste said:

How can I switch the focus to a palette so I can close it with Cmd-w? This drives me nuts when I accidentally hit Cmd-t in, say, Adium, and the Fonts palette comes up. The only way to dismiss it is with the mouse. If I click its titlebar, I can dismiss it with Cmd-w or by clicking the tiny close widget.

February 22, 2007 1:07 PM
GCarden said:

One cool trick I've found is that a few (though admittedly not all) of these characters are supported by iTunes and the iPod. You can wow your friends and infuriate your enemies with a playlist on your iPod called "▁▂▃▄▅▆█"

February 22, 2007 3:19 PM

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