Forums Feature Suggestions Unicode via Alt key

This has to be manually enabled in Windows via the registry, but once enabled, Unicode characters can be manually typed in via Alt+ similar to how you enter in ASCII symbols via Alt+keypadNumbers

For this explanation, when I mention simultaneous keys, I'll use (plus) and + for the actual numberpad key. Unicode input is done by Alt(plus)+3C3 which gives σ

Normally, and it does in mIRC's case, this interferes with Alt+ shortcuts. I wanted to check this in Notepad... and Notepad is actually "Alt+" friendly.. it disables Alt+ shortcuts after entering Alt(plus)+ so then the sequence can be fully entered without shortcut interruption.

Is this feasible in mIRC?

It can be done yes, and it's a good idea to prevent this from happening.

It's not "manually enabled via registry", it's a standard behaviour of Rich Edit Controls, of which the editbox is one:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/...t_shortcut_keys

Notepad doesn't "disable" anything. It's not *trying* to be "Alt+ friendly". It just doesn't use richedit. If it did, these features would be enabled as they are in every richedit textbox in your entire operating system.

Just as suggested, it depends on which 'box' or input you click into. A basic Text input box will not natively support unicode key input unless it is 'overridden'.

A Richedit input box supports a bit more to support a more WYSIWYG interface. So the designers decided to support unicode manual input characters.

Great observation and hope you understand.

Oh, and I am unsure exactly what mIRC uses for the text input box, so I cannot answer that question. Maybe argv0 can answer if it is an overridden class of a textbox, a textbox, or some form of richedit class.

Ahh.. the link for the RichEdit library clears it all up. I checked earlier, with Alt-X, and got no convert.. so didn't know RichEdit conversion worked, or that mirc's input box was RichEdit. The library document showed Ctrl-Alt-Shift-F12 as an alternative for Alt-X, which did work. Thanks for the info.

The use of Alt+(+)HEXVALUE didn't work until that one specific key was added to the registry, for me. But interestingly enough in notepad, Alt+3f3 would would pull down File when you get to F in the key sequence. The Alt+(+)3f3 sequence would not.. but it would churn out the Unicode character associated with 3f3.