Alt code: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 15:29, 30 July 2024

Revision as of 16:09, 30 July 2024

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In the IBM PC Bios typing an Alt code greater than 255 produced the same as that number [[Modulo operator|modulo]] 256.<ref name="WannaBuildASnowman">{{Cite web |first=Raymond |last=Chen |title=The history of Alt+number sequences, and why Alt+9731 sometimes gives you a heart and sometimes a snowman |work=The Old New Thing |publisher=Microsoft |date=2 July 2024 |url=https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20240702-00/?p=109951}}</ref> Some applications retained this behavior, while others (in particular applications using the Windows [[RichEdit]] control, such as [[WordPad]] and [[PSPad]]) made numbers from 256 to 65,535 produce the corresponding Unicode character.<ref name="RichEdit">{{Cite web |last=Walker |first=Jim |display-authors=etal |title=About Rich Edit Controls |work=Windows App Development |publisher=Microsoft |via=[[Microsoft Learn]] |url=https://learn.microsoft.com/windows/win32/controls/about-rich-edit-controls |date=27 April 2022}}</ref> For instance, {{key press|Alt}}+{{key press|9}}{{key press|7}}{{key press|3}}{{key press|1}} in WordPad produces the {{unichar|2603}}. If the Windows Code Page was set to CP1252 then all Unicode characters except [[C0 and C1 control codes|control characters]] could be typed this way.

===Hexadecimal Alt codesAlternatives===

Because most Unicode documentation and the [[Character Map (Windows)|Character Map]]character utilitytables show the code points in [[base 16|hex]], not decimal, a variation of Alt codes was developed to allow the typing of numbers in hex (using the main keyboard for {{keypress|A}}–{{keypress|F}}). To enable it, a user must set or create a string type ({{code|REG_SZ}}) value called <code>EnableHexNumpad</code> in the [[Windows Registry|registry]] key <code>HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control&nbsp;Panel\Input&nbsp;Method</code>, assign the value data <code>1</code> to it, and then reboot or log out/in. A leading {{keypress|+}} then indicates hex input, for example {{key press|Alt|+}}{{key press|1|1|B|chain=}} will produce {{char|ě}}&nbsp;(e with [[caron]]).

There are many [[Unicode input|other ways]] of typing arbitrary Unicode characters, such as the [[Character Map (Windows)|Character Map]] utility.

== Other operating systems ==