In all fairness, Windows has not made it much more difficult. However
the default keyboard layout for most English language installations is
the vanilla US one and while that is fine for most people, it does
present problems for those people who need to work with letters and
symbols outside of the 7-bit ASCII character set.
But there is a better way.
Because I type a small but significant number of accented characters, I
load the US International keyboard instead of the default US. That lets
me type µ with a single keystroke similar to your Option-m, namely Right
ALT - m
The US International keyboard is identical in layout to the standard US
but has some extra capabilities which make it quite useful. Many
European characters are easily typed either by chorded keystrokes or by
composition. The only inconvenience is when using quote and apostrophe
(" and ') because these are used in composition ... 'a -> á, "o -> ö so
if I want to type 'o' then I have to press ' space o ' space. Sometimes
I make mistakes but the slight inconvenience of these quirks is
adequately compensated by the convenience of the International keyboard.
A web search for "Windows US international keyboard" yields more
information ... these two look useful
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306560
http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/international/accents/codeint.html
This is somewhat off-topic but I hope this helps some people with those
pesky SI symbols :-)
On 2010-12-29 20:54, Bill Hooper wrote:
On Dec 24 , at 9:07 AM, Martin Vlietstra wrote:
If you want to write "µ", you have a number of choices:
1) ...
2) Type Alt-0181 when using Windows.
3) ...
Regarding choice #2:
On my Mac, I just type option-m to get the Greek lower case mu (µ).
Windows always makes thing more complicated. Doesn't it?
Bill Hooper
1 800 000 µm tall (Ha, ha!)
Fernandina Beach, Florida, USA
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SImplification Begins With SI.
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