Feature request: Special characters as part of the pallette

[Monique]

I would love to see a "Character Inserts" menu, perhaps under the "Character Style" menu in the pallette, that allows you add special characters that you use all the time. For example, I use the m-dash constantly, but it's a pain to go into the insert menu all the time. Even if I use the shortcut alt-command-T, I still have to click on the proper symbol, then insert. That's a 3-key shortcut plus two more clicks--and I use the m-dash quite a bit. I am aware that one can create a symbol-specific shortcut, and that would be a short-term solution. But it would be brilliant to be able to double-click a pallette menu item and the particular symbol would be added. I would probably add a few other things to my mini-menu like a cents sign (I have a UK keyboard), ellipses, etc.

[rpcameron]

Double-clicking on the system-wide special characters palette inserts the character. Also, an en-dash is ⌥-, an em-dash is ⇧⌥- and ¢ is ⌥4. (That's [Opt]+[-], [Shift]+[Opt]+[-] and [Opt]+[4], respectively; it's the same on both the US and British keyboards.)

As for having the special characters in the palette, I feel that is best left to the OS to handle, depending on which keyboard you are using at the time. Therefore, I vote against this idea.

[Edit: Also, the ellipses is ⌥; ([Opt]+[;])—I didn't see that you had asked about that character as well.]

[suavito]

If the special characters you can reach via alt/opt are not enough for you might consider getting a text expansion app like TypeIt4Me, TextExpander oder Typinator.

This does mean an extra app and extra costs, true, but then again they work in every app you can write in. You can use them for bigger text snippets but also for special characters. (Sadly, yet non of the three is able to expand a single - to an n-dash where it is proper.)

I definitely recommend Typinator which seems to offer less functions on the first glance (e. g. syncing is missing) but in my opinion has a more clever concept. For example I expand three periods to an ellipsis, [. to […], p. to p.[non-breaking space] so the page number does not stand alone in the next line etc. Does not work with the other apps without restrictions.

And right now MacHeist http://www.macheist.com/ is offering a free Typinator license! (Please note that I have no business relation with any of the two; I'm a satisfied Typinator customer and do know nothing about MacHeist, so make sure you're not selling them your soul when signing up.)

PS: Rumor goes that Snow Leopard will have an auto-text function.

[Mart°n]

I too vote for an additional character palette. Sure, the OS already has one but it’s not a pleasure to use. I also have PopChar installed which is much better, but still I would prefer a separate palette for Mellel for different reasons:

1. Language capabilities
Mellel is a great multi-language word processor so different users have different when it comes to character insertion. Some may be satisfied with an ellipsis replacement (which could be inserted with alt+.) but some require some characters from different languages that aren’t easy to remember when assigned to some shortcuts or content replacement software (Arabian, Hebrew or Greek characters, dingbats as bullet-points or small icons…)

2. OS Version independence
You always could go for an integrated solution (like the integrated character palette) but this also could mean, that one halve of your users use the optimized new version (of OS X 10.8) while the others still use that barely usable thing of 10.2. If you build your own solution, every Mellel user could take advance of the Mellel character pallette.

3. Make it better
Is a good thing to use features already built into the OS as users could adapt the learned way of doing things to other applications. The drawback of going this route is, that you’re limited to the OS included module. Take the copy & paste feature as an example. Every app could use it but some applications offer an extended version of this, allowing you to save several copied items in an paste buffer. This could speed up your work multiple times in some cases.
Back to the character palette. The system wide palette also could be improved a lot (PopChar is the best example to show how it could be done). I for one would like to see the following improvements:
• A favorite tab (as in the OS solution) but this one should be able to show the character’s name or it’s “surrounding area” which would be very helpful, if you like to store “empty” characters (en-space, em-space, hair-space…)
• Something like a magnifier tool (similar to the magnifier in PopChar but with a greater magnification). This is especially helpful, if you need to insert symbols from dingbats fonts
• Should be dockable to the other palettes
• If Mellel supports alternative OpenType glyphs, the alternative glyphs should be selectable via this palette (similar to the glyph-palette in InDesign)
• Auto-replace indicator. If Mellel sometimes gets an auto-replace option, the palette could be used to display the auto-replace suggestions for those of us, that don’t like an automated auto-replacement. For example, if you type (R), the palette could suggest you the ® sign and you could click (and replace) it if you like. If you’ve planned to type (R) it stays in place.

Currently no other solution could give you the above functionality

[miles11]

There are two small apps I would suggest:

1) Clip Master, a free preference pane saves items for later use. It's quick and easy to add new pieces of text, etc. This is okay for saving a few items.

2) But my favorite utility, by far, is CopyPaste Pro. This is a multi-clipboard app that includes many capabilities you may find useful. You can have as many clipboards and archives as you need.

With the Archive feature (sort of like a scrapbook) you can save often used text, symbols or images for future use. Each archive item stored is assigned a keyboard shortcut, so you can quickly paste a needed symbol or image into your current document.

I often use special characters, too. Using CopyPaste I keep all my most used characters in a SINGLE archive, instantly available for use. With Character palette, or Keyboard Viewer I have to go from one place to another searching for the particular character needed, sifting through different fonts, etc. Using CopyPaste I can look at the archive palette, quickly choose and insert the character then get back to work

CP also includes some text manipulatiop tools: all caps, lower case, send selection to email, etc. Here's a link. There's a demo available here, test it for a test drive:

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/12795