Typing High Ascii Values On A Standard Keyboard

AutoHotKey or something like it may be a solution for commonly used extended characters. I wouldn't want to do without AHK now that I am used to using it. Thanks to TheCrumb and his TACFUG presentation for that.

At some points I've actually included some of those characters in my passwords. My theory is that it makes them a lot more secure, since most brute force attacks on passwords probably focus on easily accessible keyboard characters.

Although it took some effort to remember them when logging in ;)

yeah... my password used to include © and Þ ... but knowing how to type those can cause problems sometimes. Some browsers seem to puke on those if you don't make them © or whatever

err &_copy_;

On-screen character maps don't require remembering ASCII or Unicode numeric values. They exist for every OS, as far as I know. And they allow you pick out the character you want by how it looks, not by memorization.

Unfortunately, the Windows accessory to do this typically loads the character onto the clipboard with style information, and styled text is used in preference to plain text. As a result, the character usually pastes in a different font from the one you're using. So you have to pay the price of restyling after you paste. Generally I'd rather do that than remember numeric values of characters.

If you really like to use numeric values, and you're coding for a web page (not entering a password), you can also use "numeric entity encoding" (ampersand, poundsign, unicodevalue, semicolon). There are numeric entity encoding formats for both decimal and hexadecimal, and even octal, I think.

Numeric entity encoding also works in XML. In ColdFusion, the default output character set is UTF-8, so we don't have to do that. But if you accept XML from others, and those others are clueless about how to UTF-8 encode their text, you can advise them about how to do numeric entity encoding instead. (It's generally a much easier explanation.)

Eeek, this takes me back to doing very strange ASCII graphics for bulletin board headers in the 80s...

/goes off for some Oveltine and to find my slippers...

I remember someone using Þ in emoticons on ICQ a long time ago. :Þ (0222)

Hey Ben,
I don't know if this was mentioned, but you have to use the number pad for the numbers. I don't know how to make it work with the top row of numbers on a standard keyboard.

I worked on a site for an event in Cancún (alt+0250) with other verbiage en español (alt+0241). It's amazing all the high-ASCII codes you wind up memorizing if you type them enough times.

(I'd use the easy-to-remember HTML entities, ú and ñ, but my CMS encodes what I type.)

While I'm all for strong passwords, I like the ability to know I can log into any web-based accounts from any connected computer... not just Windows.

I was very sad to see these don't work in Linux. I used to use 171, 172 etc all the time for fractions, but can't now that I'm mostly Linux based.

This is so useful, how did you come across it?

Thanks Ben!

Yea, these keycodes are very useful. My favs are 3-6 ;)

@MSDN they have a nice point on this:

Alt+Numpad: A method of entering characters by typing in the character's decimal code with the Numeric Pad keys (Num Lock turned on). In Windows:

Alt+<xxx>, where xxx is the decimal value of a code point, generates an OEM-encoded character.
Alt+<0xxx>, where xxx is the decimal value of a code point, generates a Windows-encoded character.
Alt+<+>+<xxxx>, where xxxx is the hexadecimal Unicode code point, generates a Unicode-encoded (UTF-16) character.

(from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/goglobal/bb964658.aspx)

Therefore, there should be a possibility to do at least the OEM or the UTF-16 chars on Linux, too.
On Linux there are some similar possibilities, for example 'Compose Keys' or the KDE keyboard functions.

And normally, the ALT Keycodes also work with notebook layouts with 'FN'-Notepads.

Awesome , thanks for the share, I keep reading your posts