Windows 10: i am unable to insert a variety of unicode characters

despite having num lock enabled, pressing "alt" "+" and then the code does nothingfor example, U+203D is one of the characters I have triedit seems that the functionality for pressing "+" whilst entering strings when holding "alt" is completely missingunrelated, but i'm unsure what topic to put this into, so i'm using the default option

:)

 

Type a Unicode Character

You can convert numbers from decimal to hex to octal to binary. But those are the numbers used as Unicode code points. They're the "serial numbers" for characters.

But the alt codes are a different. They're not related to the Unicode code points. There is no numerical conversion from Unicode codes to alt codes.

Alt codes predate Unicode by a decade or so. Alt codes are just arbitrary numbers that Microsoft assigned. So you have to look up the key codes. Do a google search to find a complete list.

 

How to type unicode characters in Windows 10?


I haven't the right keyboard available on my laptop, so I can't test this, but the way we used to do it was:

1. Press and hold down the Alt key.
2. Press the + (plus) key on the numeric keypad.
3. Type the hexidecimal unicode value.
4. Release the Alt key.

This comes from:

How to enter Unicode characters in Microsoft Windows

Which leads on to this small utility:

UnicodeInput - a utility to enter Unicode characters on Microsoft Windows

Which I also cannot test.

In Microsoft Word,there must be numerous published macros for handling Unicode - some will be better than others - just go to:

microsoft word unicode macro - Google Search

for loads of links.

 

What Unicode characters can be used in Win .txt files?

Yes you can save .txt as Unicode. For example X².txt

I don't think you can enter them in notepad (or Notepad++) using 00B2 Alt X (which is ²) although it works in Word.

You can use the built in windows program Character Map and copy/paste from the clipboard though into Notepad. See Insert ASCII or Unicode Latin-based symbols and characters - Office Support

When you save change the encoding to Unicode (you can make the filename Unicode also if you save to NTFS)

Here are the unicode characters supported by the Consolas font but I think copy paste from Character Map is easier personally.