Alt codes not working properly

I am starting to do a lot of phonetic translations of classical songs and find using the character map extremely tedious for a special characters. Most of my Alt codes work well, ie the standard accented letters (ê, ì etc..) but I cannot for the life of me get the schwa - upside down 'e' - to work without copying and pasting it.

The Alt code for a lower case schwa is alt+0601 but that comes up with 'Y' and the uppercase schwa �alt+0399 comes up with nothing at all. I have tried both with the num lock on and off.

I am on a laptop but have a number-pad (specifically bought for this!), the language is set to English UK although I do change occasionally and the keyboard is in the United States-International layout.

Can I rearrange the alt codes to write my own or is there something else I haven't done yet?

I am slightly plebian so probably won't understand a very technical reply, I'm afraid!

Thanks in advance

PhoneticFanatic said:

I am starting to do a lot of phonetic translations of classical songs and find using the character map extremely tedious for a special characters. Most of my Alt codes work well, ie the standard accented letters (ê, ì etc..) but I cannot for the life of me get the schwa - upside down 'e' - to work without copying and pasting it.

The Alt code for a lower case schwa is alt+0601 but that comes up with 'Y' and the uppercase schwa �alt+0399 comes up with nothing at all. I have tried both with the num lock on and off.

I am on a laptop but have a number-pad (specifically bought for this!), the language is set to English UK although I do change occasionally and the keyboard is in the United States-International layout.

Can I rearrange the alt codes to write my own or is there something else I haven't done yet?

I am slightly plebian so probably won't understand a very technical reply, I'm afraid!

Thanks in advance

Does this help?

If you have the International keyboard activated, you will only be able to input codes with the ALT key on the left side of the keyboard.

No, sorry, I was only using the left side anyway, the right [alt gr] doesn't work in any of the languages I've changed it to.

PhoneticFanatic said:

No, sorry, I was only using the left side anyway, the right [alt gr] doesn't work in any of the languages I've changed it to.

OK, moving ahead, does this help;

Another thing is that the font has to support those characters. The Character Map will help you find out which ones do. Most, if not all, the common textual fonts that come with Windows do.

I was using Sylfaen but changed back to boring Times New Roman as more characters are available with that font. Ah, think I may have solved it to some extent. I am using Open Office not Word and have just checked that the characters do work in Wordpad although O.O. is better and would prefer to use that. I don't understand why they wouldn't work in O.O. though.

PhoneticFanatic said:

I was using Sylfaen but changed back to boring Times New Roman as more characters are available with that font. Ah, think I may have solved it to some extent. I am using Open Office not Word and have just checked that the characters do work in Wordpad although O.O. is better and would prefer to use that. I don't understand why they wouldn't work in O.O. though.

OK, try the following.

You can enter unicode codepoints by pressing Ctrl-Shift-u and then the codepoint you want to use. So if you type Ctrl-Shift-u 0 1 8 8, you will see an underlined u0188 and then press enter and you will see ƈ.
Alternatively, you may want to check out the compose key, which will probably let you type faster. (System -> Preferences -> Keyboard -> Layouts -> Options -> Compose Key, select a key to use, then press Close, and type in the test box to see how it works. E.g. Compose ' c will produce ć, same as above only with fewer keystrokes.

HTH

C-S-u 0188 gives me 0188, but Enter just gives me a linefeed.

System in Control Panel does not contain the Preferences option. Are you talking about PC W7? Your references to options and actions do not track with my layout.

Turn OFF Sticky Keys !!! They messed it !!!

I'm using Windows 7 on a desktop and I've noticed that alt codes don't work properly on WordPad. I need • a lot, which is normally [alt]+7.

On WordPad, you get it with [alt]+0149. Interesting.