§ ¤ µ - keyboard oddities

[JoeP]

The standard Finnish (and Swedish) keyboard has, obviously, the extra letters the alphabet uses: ä ö and å.

Presumably for general international use it also has a key that acts as a deadkey for other accents: ¨ ^ and ~ (producing eg ü, ô or ñ) and one for ´ and `.

As well as the shift, lots of characters are accessed via AltGr - the right Alt key - including the ~ mentioned above and symbols like @${[]} which makes programming a bit more fiddly but I'm getting used to it.

But it also has some characters that I've never had the need to use.

§ (section symbol) is available top-left, under the Esc key ... I can imagine legal types getting some use out of this - any thoughts?

¤ (I don't even know what to call this) is available as shift-4. What's this even for?

And µ (mu) is available as AltGr-M. Why mu and not other Greek letters like pi and delta?

A whole bunch of other letters are available via AltGr like ß þ ð ŋ but you have to remember them. The above ones are actually printed on the keycaps.

Image at File:KB Sweden.svg - Wikipedia

[Crumb]

µ is used for metric units to symbolize micro. Maybe that's why. As in µg = microgram and µm for micrometer. To differentiate from mg and mm.

[Ensign Steve]

In Silicon Valley, we use µs to measure signal latency and µg to measure doses of LSD.

[JoeP]

To the extent that it would be worth having on a keyboard? Do US keyboards have this innovation? (I would guess not.)

[Crumb]

For the metric system? Surely you jest.

[ceptimus]

On a UK keyboard, in Linux, AltGr-m gives a µ though it's not marked on the keycaps. All the shifted and unshifted AltGr letter and number keys give something - and some of them are fairly easy to remember like AltGr-U (uppercase, shifted, U) giving an up arrow ↑ and without the shift, so lowercase giving a down arrow ↓ (lower = down, get it?).

You can get all the fractions of eighths, using shifted and unshifted AltGr number keys (plus 0 and 1).

0 ⅛ ¼ ⅜ ½ ⅝ ¾ ⅞ 1

No easy combination for the Pi symbol that I know of. Typing 227 on the number keypad, while holding down Alt, works in Windows, but not in Linux, not in a browser anyway.

[Sock Puppet]

§ would be useful for references to contracts that use them. Of course, I could just type "Section," but where's the fun in that?

If you're writing nearly anything to file in court, you need the damned thing for your citations. ¶ would be awesome to have on a single key, too.

[democracy]

Ñ and ñ because I have a Spanish keyboard. ¿ upside down question mark. That is (I think) because in classical Latin or Latin-rooted languages, the speaker or reader must be queued for the tone (inflection) of a question. ¿How are you? They have the same form with exclamation marks. ¡Basta!

[JoeP]

Here, AltGr-? and Altgr-! produce ¿ and ¡

AltGr-Shift-3 to 7 produce alternate quotation marks »«“„ used in different countries.

Shift-§ produces ½ and that's even printed on the key cap.

[JoeP]

Does anyone know what ¤ is used for? I have an idea it's used for sub-sections or items but I'm not at all sure.

[ceptimus]

I can get ¶ using AltGr-r, and § using AltGr-shift-s.

¤ is the generic currency sign so you use it like $ or £ or € for currencies that you don't have a character in your font for. It's sometimes called a scarab, as it looks a bit like a beetle.

[JoeP]

I shall now use the scarab wherever possible. Worth a ¤1 or two.

¶ would indeed be worth having. I haven't found it anywhere as a standard key (Linux compose key sequences are a whole different world).

For me AltGr-s produces ß, logically enough, and the shifted version is ẞ.

[democracy]

° This actually has some use. If you are talking geometry (45° angle) or physics and want to talk temperature (0°C). But this is also a classical symbol for the ordinal numbers that I see sometimes in older text from the 19th century. 1°, 2°, 3°... = 1st, 2nd, 3rd...