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Anything Like Key Caps in Tiger?

D

Dave Marsh

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 23, 2002
210
0
Sacramento, CA
One of the utilities I used a lot in MacOS 9 was Key Caps. It was a convenient way to find that elusive symbol/character by simply selecting the font, then alternately pressing the command, shift, option keys in various combinations to find out which key combination gave you what you wanted.

Now we have the Font Book, but it doesn't have this feature. For example, I needed the heart symbol for a database update this weekend. I could see it was in Zapf Dingbats, but I had to go into Word, select the font, then start pressing all the keys in various combinations to find the heart symbol.

Can anyone identify a tool in MacOS X that has this MacOS 9 Key Caps functionality? :confused:
 
In Panther, in the International Menu, go to the Input Menu page, click "show input menu bar," scroll to the bottom of the list, and select Keyboard Viewer (which is different from Character Palette). I think this will do what you want. Haven't gotten Tiger yet, so can't speak for it. :(

Palette gives you a list of all available characters in a font, and is better if you want to insert a symbol you rarely use. If you want to type many characters / see the keyboard shortcut, I think Keyboard Viewer is better. It stays oon top, and as you press Apple/Option/Ctrl/Fn/etc, it shows you the characters that would be performed by each key on the keyboard. I think the reason that its in there, instead of somewhere else, is that its good for things like typing in Cyrillic on a US keyboard, where the Roman keys have no real relationship to what they type in Cyrillic. Except for the "c" which is oddly enough, in the same place on both. :)
 
Dave Marsh said:
One of the utilities I used a lot in MacOS 9 was Key Caps. It was a convenient way to find that elusive symbol/character by simply selecting the font, then alternately pressing the command, shift, option keys in various combinations to find out which key combination gave you what you wanted.

Now we have the Font Book, but it doesn't have this feature. For example, I needed the heart symbol for a database update this weekend. I could see it was in Zapf Dingbats, but I had to go into Word, select the font, then start pressing all the keys in various combinations to find the heart symbol.

Can anyone identify a tool in MacOS X that has this MacOS 9 Key Caps functionality? :confused:
Click to expand...

I don't have Tiger, but in Panther, Open the International Palette in System Prefs. then check 'show character palette.'
This will produce a new menubar icon (US flag for US keyboard users) that has a character palette full of all kinds of letters, symbols...
 
Actually, I think what you want is the Keyboard Viewer, which allows you to see the keyboard sequences. As mentioned already though, you need to go into the International Menu to activate this. You can then access it from the menu bar ...
 
Actually, I think what you want is the Keyboard Viewer, which allows you to see the keyboard sequences. As mentioned already though, you need to go into the International Menu to activate this. You can then access it from the menu bar ...
 
Actually, I think what you want is the Keyboard Viewer, which allows you to see the keyboard sequences. As mentioned already though, you need to go into the International Menu to activate this. You can then access it from the menu bar ...
 
Key Caps was included as an app in Jaguar, but not in Panther. However you could run the Jag version in Panther if you saved it, and I'd guess it would run in Tiger fine too.

The Void
................
Planet Miron
 
pieter023 has the solution. I didn't know about Keyboard Viewer until now. I was disappointed when I realized Panther got rid of the super-useful Key Caps, so I've been using a back up of the Key Caps from Jaguar. I guess I don't need it anymore. :cool:
 
Apple Hobo said:
pieter023 has the solution. I didn't know about Keyboard Viewer until now. I was disappointed when I realized Panther got rid of the super-useful Key Caps, so I've been using a back up of the Key Caps from Jaguar. I guess I don't need it anymore. :cool:
Click to expand...

*points up to the second reply in the thread* ;)
 
Thanks for the timely replies. The Character Pallet allowed me to Insert the character I highlighted just fine.

The Keyboard Viewer was a mystery, however. As an example, I was trying to insert a heart symbol in a document. The Character Pallet allowed me to insert it. However, I wondered what the keyboard font/combination was, to just remember it for next time. But, when I selected the Apple Symbols font I couldn't find the keyboard combination for the heart symbol. So, the Keyboard Viewer doesn't seem to do what Key Caps did. I suppose I'm missing something. I tried holding down various combinations of the Option/Shift/Control keys to no avail.

So, unless someone can suggest what I'm missing, I'll use the Character Pallet to directly insert it.

Thanks again. ;)
 
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