• Cracks_InTheWalls@sh.itjust.works
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    5 months ago

    You kid, but as an Canadian Anglophone, this is what I do any time I have to send an email to someone with a French name with an accented character.

    Yes, I know the special character menu is a thing, but I have shit to do.

    • Albbi@lemmy.ca
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      5 months ago

      Try this instead if you have a number pad on your keyboard:

      Hold alt and type 0233 and then release the alt key.

      For my favourite, type : then hold alt and type 0254. 😛

        • toynbee@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          I believe you can do this with the on-screen keyboard! If you’re using Windows, I think that can be accessed with super+u (but I haven’t used Windows in a long time so I apologize if I misremembered or if this is no longer accurate).

      • toothpaste_sandwich@feddit.nl
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        5 months ago

        Or better yet, start using the US-international keyboard layout. You press the accent you want (', `, ", ~, …) and the letter you want it on, and boom. Writing normal versions of those symbols requires a space after writing them, but that’s easy to get used to.

        It’s pretty much the default setting in the Netherlands.

          • Albbi@lemmy.ca
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            5 months ago

            That sounds easier than remembering the arcane number associated with an accent.

        • Klaymore@sh.itjust.works
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          5 months ago

          I use US International with no dead keys, so ` ’ and ~ all work normally, but you can do right-alt (alt gr) + a to make à and so on.

        • Cracks_InTheWalls@sh.itjust.works
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          5 months ago

          I tried this for a bit, until I came into work hungover one Monday and for the life of me couldn’t figure out why my password wasn’t working.

          (May have been the Canadian multilingual layout, I don’t remember)

      • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        I remember this from working on a DOS PC with a German keyboard. Which has no backslash character, among other characters one need for programming. Having äöü at your fingertips is no help if you need [].

    • Artyom@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      Most modern OSs have special bindings for special characters. On a Mac it’s like alt+ e e for é. I think it’s just alt + e on Linux.

      • bleistift2@sopuli.xyz
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        5 months ago

        Don’t you guys have dead keys? On German keyboards there’s a key that does nothing on its own. When you press it twice, you get ‘`’, and when you press that button and ‘e’ you get è.

        Many people confuse this for the apostrophe which brings me into a murderous rage every time I see it.

    • pedz@lemmy.ca
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      5 months ago

      We (Canadians) actually have two layouts to type French characters. The modern Canadian multilingual layout, and the traditional “French (Canada)” layout. As an older French speaking Canadian, I prefer the traditional layout but both work. You can even type English words with these.

      • Cracks_InTheWalls@sh.itjust.works
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        5 months ago

        It’s always some bitch named Hélênè.

        (This was accomplished by searching, in no particular order, ‘e accent aigu’, ‘Pokemon wikipedia’, and ‘e with pointy hat’)

        • brbposting@sh.itjust.works
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          5 months ago

          H̴̢̰̙̬͆́́̊̑́̽͐̐é̸͓̼̋́̍ͅľ̵̨̛̲̠͎̠̮̮̙̠͕̖̖̥̰͚́̈͌͒̆̈̆ê̶̘̘̘̮̙̪̦̹̟̩̂̋̀̊̊̈́̐̍̈́͗̒̃̽͐̕n̷͍̺̻̱̰̳̦͒̊͂̄̽͑̍̃̂͗͆͘͜è̴̦͚̮͎̖̖̩̻͉͋̀̌̅̒̇͌ is such a b̴e̷a̸u̴t̷i̴f̵u̷l̴ n̵̡̢̡̨̨̢̡̧̡̧̧̨̢̨̧̨̢̧̨̡̨̧̢̛̗̗̻̬͈̗̖͈̙̫̠͕̥̲̲̙͕͕̣̞͉̦̙̗̻̥̝̼̬͉͚̮͖̻̘͉͕̜̟̗̫̣̰͎̩͚̼̤͉͇̟̙͍͕̤̩͙̳̥̗͚̼̱͓̝̱̗̬̜̳̳̼̬͎̥̺̞̦͔̘̤̟̼̻̲͕̳̤̯̙̤̗͕̼̰͇̙̟̖̪̱̝͖̭̺̼̫̣̳̮̺̦͇̝̯̠̟̼̫̘̫͔̤̗͕̖̟̲̳͓̼̖̘̦̩̟̹̹̝̻̮̯̗̜͇̳̯͇̥͙͔̝̠̞̱̲̭̲̥̳̻̲͙̙̘͚̳̬̱͔̫̩̠͙͎͇̟͕̠͍̠̠̮̭̱̗͇͓̥̪̥͓͉͚͓͍̱̝̦̯̹̠͙̩̖̜̘̞̻̟͙̗͉̙̮̻̦̱̪͚̠͉̙̱͍̘͉͎͙̺̯͔̖̿͌̋͒̔̄̍̽̀̏͂̀̀̅̊́͂̈̐̓́̀̂̈́̈́̓͑̎̒͆̀͑͒̎̈̂̈̊̈̏̎́́͋͋̀̉̊̈́́̑̓̓̉̂̌̾̓̂̐̾̈́̊́̿̀́̇̂͂̀̐̆̆̽̂̍̎̔͊͗̓̏͂̄̿͑̽͑̃̈́̄̾͂͗̋́͋͘͘̚̕̕͘͜͜͜͜͜͜͝͝͝͠͠͝͝ͅͅͅͅͅͅͅͅͅą̵̢̡̡̨̧̢̧̧̡̨̛̛͎̪̣̜̣̘̻͙͈͈̥̘͚̼̗̩̮̠̜͉͎͍͍̝̭̹̞̜̰̦̣̙̟̟̩̮͙͖̥͓͔̝͙͍̟̠͙̮͎̹̳͖̰̪̼̙̻͓͔͍̭̞̟̯̤̩̲͈͇̳̝͔̩̮̣̠̥̖̺͕̟̩̣͖͍͇̠͖̏̿̊͊̀̄̈́̓́͗̌͋̈́̓̔̃̄͘͜͜͜m̴̛̙͚̭̪̼̯̝͇̞̹̼̫͉̬̖̩̥͓̏̎̅̇̂̄̀̓̌̂͋̓̏̋̊̑̒̊͒̂͛́̒͋̄͋͑̋͛͋͛̒̊͒́̀̄̀̓̊̀̌̉̑̎̽͂͋̍̓̿̊͗̌̋̍̄͌͑̀̿͂̌̾̓̀͋̊̋̃́̊́̃̃͐̄̀̅̌͌́̓̈́̄͋̂͂̆̈͌̀̈́̎̋̐͌͂̈́̑̉̑̎̽̎͛̑̏͛̌̄̈́̄̐̿̇̎̾̇̓̍̄͒̓͛̆̍̔̾͗̾̀̊̐̂͆͂̏̾́̃́͒̒̈́̃̄̏͂̄̊̋͑̀̒̐͗́̾̈́̿̏͆͗̓̏́̏͂͒̿͊̚̕̕͘̕̚̚̕̚̚͘͘̚͘̚̕͠͠͝͠͝͠͝͝e̵̡̡̢̨̨̡̢̨̢̨̧̡̢̡̢̢̨̢̢̧̨̨̯͔̻͚͚̥̠̗͍̫̩̞̮̣̫̹̙̰͔̙̭̲̻̭̦̫̹͖̥͎͖̳͎̠̥̙̗̖̖̳̫̖͇̲̗̥͖̙̜͓̺͖̥͎̗̟̹͖͖̖͙̞̥͓̦̙͍̬̣̫̹͔̣̻̭̘͈͍͚̲̝̹̠͕̣̪̜̘̝̞͔͙̺̯̘̹̩̳̳̮͖̣͕͔̟̬͈̻̥͚̟̰͍͈̻͙̦͙͉͔͔̣̟̬̤̞̭͖̰̣̦͔̫̥̣̪͎̺͓̲̠̬̣̘̗̠͎̩͎͇̥͔̫̖̦̭͓̙̦̪̫̼̲̲̩̫̪̟͈̥̙̞͎͕̮̗̻̙̱̲͓̜̪̺̰͓̲͉̘͔̝͇͈̰̹̤̤͓̪̰̺̝͉̺̠̠̹͈͉̠͙͌͊̈́̓͋̔̓͗̔̀͊͗̈́̅̒̌̎̔̓̅̇̈͋͐̒̈́̃̓̀̄̂̈́̾̃͘͘̚̕͜͜͜͜͜͜͝͠͠͝ͅͅ

          Also

          Recommend text replacement software if ever a name/word comes up frequently :)

  • pedz@lemmy.ca
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    5 months ago

    I work in IT and I have coworkers that use caps lock to capitalize single letters, like the beginning of a sentence. It hurts a bit every time I see it.

    • KISSmyOSFeddit@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I work in IT and I have coworkers that call the emergency support line on Saturday at 7 in the morning because “this bullshit system won’t let me log in”, then I remote in and it says in big letters right at the center of the login screen CAPSLOCK ENABLED.

      I won’t complain though, that way I make an extra 50€ (1h minimum billing time with weekend bonus) in under a minute.

      • MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
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        5 months ago

        I think this kind of thing is inevitable due to change blindness. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change_blindness

        You don’t get hit with the change blindness because A: you’re looking at the situation with fresh eyes instead of sleep deprived pre-coffee eyes that just want to get through the login screen to get some work done

        And B, because you know how to interpret every bit of visual information on the screen and thus think of it as important. I mean, think of all the times you looked at someone else’s computer and their desktop background was their kid or their dog. That’s a huge change in visual terms, but it’s a tiny change in terms of importance, so you dismiss it and get used to it immediately. You file it as unimportant and ignore it. Your filing of stuff is correct because you actually understand it. But an average user will file every single thing they don’t understand as important, and also many things they do understand but don’t care about.

        Disk mount error. Resolution not recommended. Are you experiencing interruptions? Find out why! Buy boner pills now! It looks like you’re trying to write a word document, would you like help? It’s a sunny day, 22 degrees C. USERS APPDATA ROAMING. Janice from accounting wants to show you her baby pictures. Back up your files to OneDrive now. You’re overdue for an antivirus scan. This flash drive may be corrupted, would you like to repair it? The program crashed, reporting the problem to Microsoft. Solitaire. A Nigerian prince needs your money. Please verify your phone number.

        These messages all have varying levels of importance, but they all demand the user’s attention in a way most people can’t tell apart. The user is a bald monkey relying on stimulus-sorting firmware that’s hundreds of thousands of years out of date. So the occipital lobe just files every one of those messages under the same label: noise.

    • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Reminds me of the bash.org quote that went something like:

      User1 joins channel

      User1: HELLO EVERYONE!

      Mod: Try hitting the caps lock key

      User1: OMG THANK YOU THAT’S SO MUCH EASIER!!!

  • kromem@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Yes, but you need to be wary of pasting the formatting.

    So when you do this, instead of pasting with Control+V you will want to paste without formatting using the Control+Shift+V command.

    So remember - if you want that capital ‘H’ without issues, use your Shift key when pasting what you copy from Wikipedia.

    • lseif@sopuli.xyz
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      5 months ago

      sounds a bit complex.

      i prefer to paste into notepad, and then copy it from there

      • masterofn001@lemmy.ca
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        5 months ago

        Missing some vital first steps :

        Screenshot the webpage. Print it out. Scan the text using OCR. Cut single character.

    • Caveman@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      You can copy the H and paste it into the address bar and copy again to clear the formatting.

      • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        First you copy, then open word pad and paste it there. Then remember that word pad has text formatting and open excel and paste it there. Then remember excel also has text formatting and open calculator and paste it there. Then remember that calculator can only handle numbers (or a few letters if you are a hacker and put it in hex mode) and open Minesweeper and try to set a new personal best time. Don’t you just hate it when you have one mine left and two squares with equal chance of being the mine?

        Eventually remember the pasting thing, act impressed the computer still remembers what you were trying to paste and just paste it into your notepad document and hope no one notices it’s different.

        MS getting rid of word pad really messes up my usual work flow. Or would if I wasn’t switching to Linux instead of W11. I hear the word pads grow on trees there and that it comes with sudoku built right in, but they are fancy and drop the “ku” to save typing time.

        • johannesvanderwhales@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Well notepad still exists. Even though that’s not my normal text editor (I use Visual Studio Code) I use notepad for simple text manipulation frequently.

          • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Yeah the joke was none of the first paragraph was helpful or necessary and wordpad doesn’t need to be a part of the flow. And that notepad only handles text, so you don’t have to worry about the formatting being pasted anyways.

            Notepad is my goto for files that I’m not sure what type they are and I want to check if it’s text-based.

    • Valmond@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I just paste it in notepad to remove formatting.

      And I’m not even joking, sometimes the special ALT 0227 doesnt work and my å is only on Wikipedia…

    • Snoopey@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Dammnnn I use right click page without formatting so much, I hate it when software removes the option from the right click menu… looking at you Teams. This will change my life!

    • eltrkbrd@lemm.ee
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      4 months ago

      It works in m$ office apps, but not across Windows; if I open gmail and paste formatted text from the clipboard it still retains the formatting rather then pasting as plain text. I just use notepad++ or notepad anyway. Who has time for M$ word/excel bloatware?

      Another cool tip is Windows + V to bring up clipboard history (past 25 copy selected text or images to your clipboard). Also the Window + Shift + S for built in screenshot tool.

  • stress_headache@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I used to do this, but then I changed to Hat. It’s increased my productivity significantly and saves me multiple hours each week.

    • troybot [he/him]@midwest.social
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      5 months ago

      do you mind sharing your secret for the capital i? you just used three of them in one post and i have no idea how you accomplished such a feat

    • dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      Bro I can do you one better than that and it even works without internet after the first time if you work from home!

      Open a file and copy the capitals (Ass for A, Bumbulum for B, etc.) from Wikipedia and boom! You add some html around it, go to godaddy or your favorite registrar and claim a domain (I like the expensive ones), manage nameserver and dynamic DNS with cloud flare so can access your home router without getting a static IP from your ISP, then use nginx to set up a reverse proxy (don’t forget to forward unique ports on your router in the NAT rules section!), spool a virtual machine and use your router to create a static lease, stick that file on that machine, and then make yourself a browser bookmark to the URL you purchased that hits your router port forwards to reverse proxy and lands you in that VM on a shared drive! The best part is you can often do this for less than $1000 per month depending on the URL you pick.

      Oh, be sure to set up some 2FA though if you don’t want to get hacked.

      • ulterno@lemmy.kde.social
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        5 months ago

        Set a key as a modifier key and program the character provider function in your text editor to to give the corresponding capital letter of whatever key is pressed, in case the modifier key is down.
        Even better, you can use the same modifier key with number keys and other symbol keys to give an alternative symbol, which you could also indicate on the keyboard.
        Let’s call this the Shif… oh wait, what year is this?

  • fubarx@lemmy.ml
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    5 months ago

    On desktop, how many people search for an emoji, then just copy paste the character into their text?

    Instead of switching to the alt keyboard, not that one, the other, no the emoji not the international one, dammit.

    Or bringing up the keyboard menu, then scrolling around, looking for the right one, searching, no, scroll, scroll scroll, etc.

    • RGB3x3@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I’m about to blow your mind.

      Windows key + . brings up an emoji menu. I only discovered this by accident about a month ago.

  • TheOakTree@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    I do this when writing λ, Δ, Φ, etc. in a document on a computer I don’t own or when on my phone. It’s genuinely faster than scrolling through Word’s symbol list, for example.

  • perviouslyiner@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Used to work with someone who would recycle characters. Like, instead of typing a letter on the keyboard (which had many keys specifically for this purpose), they would go looking for that letter in some text they were going to discard and Ctrl-X Ctrl-V it.

      • NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de
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        5 months ago

        You sure you’re not thinking of the Pound symbol (£)? The Euro symbol (€) would have to be a third thing, if it’s there at all.

        I’m not British and don’t know their keyboard layout, so maybe you’re right, but I would expect £ to be accessible and € less so.

        Edit: oh, you were right. £ is Shift+3, € is AltGr+4.

        • perviouslyiner@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Just looking at a random selection of two laptops and five keyboards here and they all have the 4 $ € key marked. The only keyboard I can find that doesn’t is the Windows On-Screen Keyboard.

          Although looking at laptops on shop websites, a lot of them have just 4 $ so maybe that is going out of fashion? Samsung yes, Asus no, Dell no, HP no.

          Actually the Windows On-Screen Keyboard does show € but only after you press Alt-Gr…

  • volvoxvsmarla @lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    Honestly shit like that works really well when half of your notebook’s keyboard doesn’t work anymore. The on screen keyboard is limited and copy pasting letters from texts can be faster. Especially with special characters. Or when you just need an a or s, opening the on screen keyboard again and again vs copy pasting it once and using it as a source - the second one is faster.

    I am very sad and desperate I can’t afford a new laptop

    • rhandyrhoads@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      What’s the model? I know a decent bit about laptop repair and I can do some research for you to see whether it would be a massive pain to replace the keyboard.

      • volvoxvsmarla @lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        That’s super nice of you. I think it is an HP 250 G7 (that’s on the back), I bought it back in like 2017. I’m not very tech savvy and just bought the one a fellow student had and said she liked. It drives me nuts because I don’t get how to turn it on or off (I mean I do, but it changes what it wants all the time, you gotta rub it the right way).

        • rhandyrhoads@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Just looked into it a bit and although the part is pretty cheap it’s a bit of a tricky repair. If you had 50 dollars lying around and wanted something better than an external keyboard you could just do the whole top case (part that all the internals go into which contains the keyboard and trackpad). Still requires taking apart the computer completely, but if you (or a friend) are feeling adventurous it’s not a bad route.

          • volvoxvsmarla @lemm.ee
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            5 months ago

            Can you send me a link to what I would need to buy? Maybe I’ll find someone in a repair cafe who is willing to do that. Thanks!

              • volvoxvsmarla @lemm.ee
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                5 months ago

                Quick question: how do I figure out if the malfunction is really caused by the physical keyboard and not some soft/hardware issue that has nothing to do with the keys themselves?

                • rhandyrhoads@lemmy.world
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                  5 months ago

                  Unless there’s liquid damage and it’s certain rows of keys not working at all it’s unlikely that you’d have that sort of partial failure of your keyboard. Even in that case it’s still usually the keyboard. If certain keys only work with excess pressure that’s pretty much 100% a hardware failure of the keyboard itself.