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IDEA: Customizable Unicode character paster

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garbanzo:
Greetings,

I have been looking for a small app that will do this for quite a long time. I have tried many variations but nothing is quite what I am looking for. I would like to see an app that presents the user with a window containing maybe 20 buttons (though, ideally, the number would be customizable). Each button can be assigned to a single Unicode character, maybe via an INI. Clicking on the button would paste that character into the active text field. I think such an app would work best if there were an option to keep the window on top, if it could be activated/minimized to the tray with a user-defined hotkey.

I need an app like this because I am learning Hungarian, and I occasionally need to type unicode characters. CHARMAP is just too slow and awkward for this.

One similar app is Diacrit. It lets users choose character sets from different languages, but does not allow full customization. It also does not paste the characters - it only copies them to the clipboard. Diacrit is not freeware.

http://www.diacrit.sandrila.co.uk/

LangPad is similar, but does not allow customization at all. Character sets must be purchased individually. I don't even think it does Unicode.

http://www.langpad.com/

Type International Characters is another that is customizable, though it pops up a menu from an icon in the system tray rather than presenting a GUI. This one actually worked quite well, and if is easier to implement an app that does things this way, that would be OK. It is also not free.

http://www.unicodesoft.com/

The only freeware app I have found that comes close is QuickKey. It requires .NET, however, which I do not use. It is also incredibly complicated, and contains far more features than I require.

http://nathanaeljones.com/quickkey/

There are more, but I won't list them. I have tried many, but nothing is as simple and as elegant as it could be. Just buttons that paste characters, nothing more.

So there it is! I am not a programmer so I have no idea how much time it would take to create something like this, but if it is feasible, and if anyone is inclined to help out with such an app, I would be very grateful.

Thank you!

VideoInPicture:
The only freeware app I have found that comes close is QuickKey. It requires .NET, however, which I do not use....
-garbanzo (August 28, 2008, 02:54 AM)
--- End quote ---

Would you be willing to install .Net? Or is there some reason you are against it? It's a good technology.

skrommel:
 :tellme: Have you tried if Accents works with unicode chars?

Skrommel

lanux128:
i think CharsBars would also be useful in this case.

garbanzo:
Yes, I have tried your accents app, and found that it does not work with unicode unfortunately.

I would prefer not to install .NET for a few reasons. One, I want the app to be fully portable, and any dependencies go against this. But mostly I just don't like installing things. It's a strange phobia that I have developed lately. Almost every app I use is portable, I only have a few things installed like my shell, file manager, a few codecs... I can't exactly offer a reason for this other than the joy of having a system that is almost entirely modular. It also cuts down on running processes and other things that slow down my ancient computer. It's not much of an argument, but there it is...

I did try CharBars somewhere long the way, though I don't remember why I didn't keep it. I'll try it again.

EDIT - I just grabbed AHK and loaded CharBars, but only the first character in the chars string is coming up on the menu. i changed that charcter to a unicode character and saved the .ahk file as unicode, but when i tried to reload the script it gives me an error...

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