Alt codes

[William Overington]

So this morning I composed a poem and I was, and still am, hoping to post it in Share your work.

However, a problem has arisen.

The poem is intended as a useful poem, and could be very useful for people making fonts, and people using those fonts, where the font includes one or more characters in the Private Use Area.

The thing is, getting a Private Use Area character can be awkward at times.

So if a font has, say, one non-standard character and that character is in the Private Use Area, then placing it at U+EA60 means that in a program such as WordPad one can access that character easily by using Alt 60000.

So if, say, a new script of twenty characters is being added to a font, adding them starting at U+EA61 allows access from WordPad using an Alt code of sixty thousand plus the index number of the character in the new script.

So here is the poem.

 

 

The problem is though, that it works in WordPad but not, as far as I can tell at present, in Affinity Designer.

William

 

[William Overington]

I have thought that Alt codes were a basic Windows level thing, so I am wondering why it does not seem to work in Affinity Designer.

However, if one uses the Alt 60000 code in WordPad one can then use copy and paste to get the character into Affinity Designer.

William

 

[Alfred]

Your rhyming couplet employs more than a little artistic licence, William! Sixty is a decimal number, so sixty thousand (decimal) is not “E A sixty” (hexadecimal).

As for the technical issue, application-specific methods are not standardized, so I’m not greatly surprised that what works in WordPad doesn’t necessarily work in Affinity Designer. And Windows Alt codes are, of course, of no use to Mac users.

[William Overington]

True, but if it helps people use new scripts then it will be doing its purpose well.

But why does it not work in Affinity Designer?

William

 

 

[William Overington]

William

[Alfred]

16 minutes ago, William Overington said:

But why does it not work in Affinity Designer?

I think you need a leading zero for reliable results with any value greater than 127 (or perhaps greater than 255) but even then it may not work outside of Word or WordPad. From what I’ve read, the selected codepage can make a difference, too.

[William Overington]

If I remember correctly the leading zero is below 256 to get the Unicode character, otherwise one gets a different character.

I made a test font this morning and Alt 60000 works fine in WordPad.

https://altcodeunicode.com/#:~:text=ALT%20codes%20are%20keyboard%20shortcuts%20for%20quickly%20inserting,symbols%20in%20Microsoft%20Word%2C%20Outlook%2C%20Excel%20and%20Powerpoint.

William

 

[lacerto]

Alt codes only seem to work in Affinity apps up to 255 (and as mentioned a zero must precede the codes above 127), thereafter you can directly type in a hex Unicode [preceded by +U notation, so e.g. +UEA60] and press Alt+U to toggle between the code and the character within the selected font.