[Karunamon]

OS X handles some of this by assigning mnemonics to keyboard keys with the meta key (on mac keyboards, Option, or the "windows" key on the standard layout) held down.

For instance, the registered trademark symbol ® is just option+r. ∑ is option-w. Diacritics are two-stroke combinations, to get é, you'd type option-e, which puts the ´ on the screen, and then type the e to complete the character.

Some of them definitely make more sense than others. ∑ looks like a sideways 'W", the trademark symbol is just a circled r, and the diacritic marks fit the character you'd commonly associate them with. (Guess what letter you hit to get ¨ over a letter?)

Beats copy/pasting out of character map, anyways!

[Someone]

"OS X handles some of this by assigning mnemonics to keyboard trademark symbol ® is just option+r. ∑ is option-w."

And, after they ran out of mnemonics, they sprinkled the rest of the characters on the keyboard (almost; I think they tried hard to keep things memorable, but some combinations are just plain of the "if you don't know it, you 'll never guess". The Apple logo is on the k key, for instance (IIRC). Mnemonic? MaKintosh?)

"Diacritics are two-stroke combinations, to get é, you'd type option-e, which puts the ´ on the screen, and then type the e to complete the character."

That's the old way. Recent OS X has 'hold down the e key, a menu pops up, click the desired variant or type the digit shown next to it'.

[Karunamon]

Ah neat, I wasn't aware of this. Every mac I use has the press-and-hold mechanic disabled to support a higher repeat rate. I might have to go back and play with it some more.

[dragonwriter]

> Some of them definitely make more sense than others, but it sure beats copypasting out of character map!

Sure, but even making your own keyboard layout beats copypasting out of character map for any characters that you use regularly (and if you switch from US-English to US-International as your base layout, you get a lot characters that aren't on US-English for free without making a new layout.)

[mmaldacker]

except ∑ is an upper-case sigma which corresponds to s in the latin alphabet, so why not option+s ?