The letter eth

Question

The letter eth

I would like to know if there is an easier way to type the letter eth (uppercase: Ð, lowercase: ð) in OS X. I know how to find it in the character viewer and insert it from there, but I'm hoping for an easier way, like "hold down one key and press another". In Windows, it can be easily typed by the Alt + numberpad method, if you can remember the number codes.

Wikipedia says it can be typed by holding down Option, then typing D for the lowercase, or Shift+Option, then D for the uppercase, but this is incorrect as that actually produces ∂ (with Option, D) and Î (with Shift+Option, D).

Message was edited by: Justin J. Rebbert

MacBook Pro 15.4" 2.2 GHz Core 2 Duo, Mac OS X (10.6.1)

Posted on Nov 19, 2009 12:22 PM

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Answer 1

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

123,654 points

Nov 19, 2009 1:07 PM in response to Justin J. Rebbert

What are the other consequences of changing from the US keyboard layout to the US Extended layout?

US Extended lets you type a lot more diacritics and special characters than US (which is pretty much restricted to those used in W. European languages -- grave, acute, umlaut, circumflex, tilde). Here is a list which shows some of the differences:

http://homepage.mac.com/thgewecke/diacritics.html

US Extended is also a Unicode layout, which means it will not work in apps that do not support Unicode. Those are very few these days -- mainly AppleWorks and the old Word X.

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Answer 2

V.K.

Level 9

56,238 points

Nov 19, 2009 12:42 PM in response to Justin J. Rebbert

you can see exactly what you can do after pressing various modifier keys as follows. go to system preferences->language and text->input sources and check the box for keyboard and character viewer. also check the box to show input menu in the menu bar. now you can choose the keyboard viewer from the input menu and it will show you want you can get when you press various keys. if you use us extended keyboard layout then the symbols you want are indeed given by option+d and option shiftd.
ðÐ

If you are using a different keyboard layout and don't want to use US extended, you can modify your layout using Ukelele
http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=ukelele

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Answer 3

Nov 19, 2009 12:57 PM in response to V.K.

I already had the Keyboard & Character Viewer checked, and Show Input Menu checked. As I did say, I know how to get to the Character Viewer and find the character there and input it from there.

What I did not know was that I would need to select a different keyboard layout other than the default standard one for the Option D trick to work. Wikipedia certainly didn't mention that. I assume that "U.S." (not "U.S. Extended") is the standard default keyboard layout (for Macintoshes actually sold in the US, anyway), because I don't recall ever being asked which keyboard layout to use, nor changing it from its original setting. What are the other consequences of changing from the US keyboard layout to the US Extended layout?

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Answer 4

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

123,654 points

Nov 20, 2009 6:39 AM in response to Justin J. Rebbert

Wikipedia certainly didn't mention that.

Fixed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eth

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