While looking for a character to place into Illustrator today, I noticed that the Keycaps character map utility is no longer to be found in OS X Panther (10.3). Poking around in Google, I found that this function is now handled through the Keyboard Viewer palette. getting this to show up takes a few steps though.
First, open System Preferences and show the International settings.
Second, select the Input Menu tab and check the Keyboard Palette checkbox. Check the menu box that reads "Show input menu in menu bar".
Now you will notice an icon in your system's top menu bar, probably the U.S. flag. This the input menu. When you click on the menu you can select "Show Keyboard Viewer" and the palette will open, allowing you to select a font and hold down Option, Shift, Command keys to view keyboard combinations.
Comments
06/03/04 @ 11:23
I realized the same last night while working in Illustrator as well. Thanks for posting this workaround - any ideas on how to do this without a glaring flag in my menu bar?
06/03/04 @ 20:01
Sorry. I don't know of a way to view the character without having the flag up there.
08/29/06 @ 14:32
WOW! Thank you for revealing this great utility that's already included with OSX. What a help! Not even PopChar does this!!!
10/01/06 @ 23:51
Thank you for this tip. I was wondering where that was :-D
10/17/06 @ 16:15
Thanks. I know I got this before. But since I reinstalled the O/S (hey, I'm a Windows expatriot: re-installing is a way of life) and tweaked it here & there I lost the tip on how this worked.
Windows may not be perfect; but Windows users get used to certain tools at their fingertips. Notepad, Paint and Character Map are the top apps in importance (lame as they may/may not be).
11/12/06 @ 13:32
There is another way as well using Font Book in 10.4. Open font book and click Edit, Special Characters. Click the View dropdown and select Glyph. From there you can choose your font, and at the bottom in the Character Info area, you can click the glyph itself and it will be inserted into the last active application. it doesn't work with some applications (i.e. Photoshop), but does for Apple apps and some others.
01/03/07 @ 21:03
http://www.apple.com/pro/tips/symbols.html
03/14/07 @ 23:59
Hi,
Is there any way I could use this with TTF ( True Type Fonts) ?
Most the Tamil Fonts I use are TTF fonts and I can't see individual characters with the above method.
OS X Tiger has got Tamil Unicode which I don't use as its keyboard setup is different and the Fonts are not artistic which I can't use for my graphics or motion graphics work.
Therefore I'm after TTF.
Please assist me.
Thank you :)
Tamil (TTF) Font Download :
www.hindutemple.no/downloads/Bamini.TTF
03/19/07 @ 20:07
cool
03/24/07 @ 22:05
Very handy! Thanks a bunch for sharing!
06/19/07 @ 14:40
If you are using adobe illustrator cs1, cs2, or cs3 there's a palette called "glyphs" if you go to window>type>glyphs
It's a really good tool.
08/25/07 @ 02:42
Great tip--coming from Windows I had no idea where to find that. I still can't get it to show the keyboard shortcuts for individual characters, though.
09/07/07 @ 14:59
Three years later and this is still useful. Thanks!
09/23/07 @ 14:26
Yes, three years have past and you are still saving lives !
Merci.
12/10/07 @ 21:23
Wow, that absolutely rocks. Thank you SO much...
01/14/08 @ 06:38
The special character pane is available from many Apple made applications (such as font book, keynote, and pages) in the edit menu. Additionally, it isn't attatched to the application, so you can use it in others. For example, I can add a β in the middle of firefox.
01/20/08 @ 07:22
This is a treasure trove of useful stuff - thanks for your hard work
01/22/08 @ 01:49
Show input menu in menu bar should already show, shouldn't it? Nevertheless, this is a great tip and could even be used to help improve computer security.
02/21/08 @ 15:21
I don't use Mac that frequently, but in windows it's under All Programs > Accessories > System tools
Sometimes it really comes handy though.
05/28/08 @ 04:32
all mine says is "show input source name"....?
05/28/08 @ 06:37
@Bobby: You probably didn't check off "Show character palette" in the system preferences. Check the instructions again.
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