silly but fun keyboard tricks (Windows edition)

[steve2470]

alt + keypad 1 (the keypad on lower right hand corner of your standard Windows keyboard) = ☺
alt + keypad 1 and then 4 = ♫ (of course no keypad 14)
alt + keypad 2,2,7 = π

many more here: http://www.alt-codes.net/

Enjoy !

[MineralMan]

1. Watch out for the ones under 32.

Some of those actually cause your PC to do things, rather than print the character on the screen. A lot of those keystrokes act as commands or have functions. Above 32, no problems.

[steve2470]

2. using the keypad and not the regular number row ?

I'm not arguing with you. Please educate me. Thanks MM.

[MineralMan]

4. It's less of a problem than it used to be.

Back in the DOS and Windows 3.x days, those lower number characters still had real characters attached to them, as they do now. But, different devices and software reacted differently when it received one of those characters. For example alt-12 on the number pad would create a new line if you typed it or when it went to most printers. When you pressed the Enter key, it sent a combination of ASCII 12 and 13 to the sofware you were using, a new line and carriage return was the result.

If I remember correctly (it's been a while), the ASCII 5 (or some other single digit) character made your computer or output device emit a sound. It's the bell control character. I just can't remember all of those ASCII control characters any more. All of this dates back to the very beginnings of ASCII. Other low numbered ASCII characters told the computer and peripherals to do other things, like perform a a page feed or a number of other operations. The lowest real ASCII character that is designed for screen display is 32, the space character. In the old days, it was important to know all that stuff, especially if you were a programmer, since a string containing those characters below ASCII 32 often produced what was politely called "unexpected results."

Today, with Windows XP and higher, that isn't so much the case, and most Windows software handles those lower-numbered characters pretty well when entered on the keyboard. But, you still can run into problems with some printers and other devices, especially legacy equipment. Most often, those characters won't do wierd things, but they have that potential.

[Festivito]

3. Actually, it's fine for the Alt-### method.

The various operating system problems could once have been created by using the Control-(Letter) Ctrl-@ being zero, Ctrl-A being 1, and so forth. But, even those are disabled under Windows and probably disabled under various versions of DOS as well. Some still exist such as Ctrl-Z for end of file. Ctrl-M once used to work as alternate for the Return key when my Return key became too sticky to use. Alas, no longer.

[MineralMan]

5. Most of the time, that's true.

It's not necessarily so for some peripherals, particularly older ones. Control characters can still produce unexpected results if you print a document containing them.

[Festivito]

6. Probably only if parallel or serial port connected.

Ctrl-G would ring the bell. Bells were dropped and later became a beep. Now it would all be done with escape codes, if they have escape codes for those things and a parallel or serial connector on the printer.

Ah, the good ole days.

[MineralMan]

7. You'd be amazed at how many 9-pin dot matrix

printers are still in use out there. Windows 7 ships with generic drivers for most of them. Epson escape codes are still in use by some vertical software, particularly where impact printing is still required for manifold copy printing.

Still, you don't find parallel ports on your new computer today, or serial ports either. You can still add those, if necessary, but they don't come with your PC any more. USB has completely taken over connectivity with peripherals. I just moved an 8-year-old Dell PC over to make room for a newer model. I was sort of surprised to see it connected to my HP 940C Deskjet via a parallel cable. I had to dig out a USB cable to hook up that printer to my newer PC. There's a serial port on the old box, too. No such thing on the newer one, but at least 8 USB ports, which is a good thing. The old Dell still used the old AT keyboard and mouse connectors, too, although I had mine plugged into USB ports. Finding an AT connector mouse or keyboard is almost impossible these days, anyhow.

Still, it's a little risky to send out even the old ASCII C-0 set of control characters to a peripheral, unless you know that nothing but modern peripherals will be connected. It's just not good practice in programming. All of that is going away, and is essentially gone now, but us old-timers still remember odd things happening if you didn't check the strings going out to peripherals for control characters from your programming efforts. FOR NEXT statements were often the culprit.