We would like to have some keyboard macros for inserting certain Unicode
characters (they happen to be in the IPA and Bengali areas of Unicode,
but later on we'll have other needs). We're aware of the Character
Tool, but for frequently used characters it would be useful to have
keystrokes.
As far as I can see, there isn't any existing macro for this, nor
examples of exactly this sort of macro. We can figure out how to do it,
I suspect, but before taking that step wanted to see if anyone else had
already done something like this that we could use as a starting point.
There are two ways this could be done, and both would probably be
useful. One way would be s.t. like Microsoft Word allows, where you
type in the Unicode code point (s.t. like '0x9A4'), and with the cursor
in or immediately after this, hit a key that triggers a macro to convert
the 0x string into the corresponding Unicode character.
The other would be to bind a key to a particular Unicode character, so
that Shift-Alt-T, say, inserts the 'Bengali Letter TA'.
We're using the free version of XMLmind now, but can buy the commercial
version if we need to. (And I almost feel obligated to do so, because
your support is so good!)
(BTW, I thought in Windows you could use the Alt key + the number pad to
do this, but it turns out that only works with legacy character encodings.)
--
Mike Maxwell
maxwell at umiacs.umd.edu
