[Big Mac]

Why did Apple have to tie Keyboard Viewer (Key Caps) to the Input Menu? Keyboard Viewer is the renamed version of Key Caps that replaced the stand alone version in Panther and is seemingly only accessible from the Input Menu. That's pretty stupid, IMO. Stupider is the fact that Apple decided not to include Keyboard Viewer along with the much less helpful Character Palette when it placed Special Characters in the Edit Menu. Stupidest of all was the choice not to allow the user any way to access Keyboard Viewer without having Input Menu (the flag menu) in the menu bar. Even on my G5 with my 17" screen I like having a clean menu bar, and most of the time the contents of the Input Menu are superfluous. But every once in awhile Keyboard Viewer is important, and when it is I have to a) go to System Preferences, b) think for a moment, c) select International d) click the Input Menu tabual e) Select show Input Menu f) Click on the Input Menu and select Keyboard Viewer, and only after those 6[/b] steps do I finally get to hunt for my character and just possibly find it!!!

I have tried to extricate the Viewer from the menu, but OS X just won't let me. I have navigated to the path of KeyboardViewerServer.app and opened it with Terminal. I have also navigated by Finder and made an alias of the application. In both cases the circumvention only worked for a limited time. Eventually KeyboardViewer would simply fail to open, until it was opened the normal way. When it fails it sends this message to the console:

2005-05-28 05:47:50.536 KeyboardViewerServer[7718] Unknown class NonAcceptKeyPopupButton in Interface Builder file.

AARGH! Please, someone tell me that Tiger made this situation a little more bearable; if so I'll finally install it tonight - consequences be damned. In the mean time, I think I'll check to see if Pop Char's still being developed.

[Jens Peter]

I thought I was the only one having this problem... And Tiger does not have any other way (that I know) of accessing the Input Panel. It is indeed very stupid, much like the removal of the status bar in Mail.
I have not tried the Terminal-way, so perhaps that could work. They could have made it a widget, that would have been much nicer...

[Chuckit]

People get furious over weird stuff.

The flag takes up 22 pixels in your menu bar. That isn't a big burden to bear. If you want the functionality of the flag (i.e. input managers such as the Character Palette or Keyboard Viewer) so much, just leave it there. It's not suddenly going to grow to seven times its natural size and start eating everything in /Library. It's not Apple's fault that you choose to disable it and re-enable it every time you want to use it. For me, it's one step: choose "Keyboard Viewer" from the input menu.

[CharlesS]

This pisses me off too. Okay, so you've buried Key Caps in a place where it is very difficult to find without digging up instructions at a place like MacNN and where the chances of a newbie user finding it are near zero. What's the result? Newbies either think they have to use the Character Palette to find special characters, or you end up with situations like that one Mac vs. PC video from the University of Illinois that someone posted a couple of years ago where some guy was claiming that the PC was better for him because he has to communicate with people from Germany, and there's no way to enter an umlaut on the Mac.

WTF? The Keyboard Viewer needs to be in an intuitive, easy-to-find place or it might as well not even exist as far as most users are concerned. The option key is one of the nicest things about the Mac, and sadly most users will never even have a clue what they can do with it. It should be either in the Edit menu along with Special Characters, or there should be a button in the Character Palette to bring it up. The current situation is simply unacceptable.

Send Apple feedback:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/feedback/

or, if you have an ADC account:

http://bugreporter.apple.com/

[Briareus]

I agree as well. Every once in a while, I need to find a bullet, trademark, copyright, etc. or remember what option key creates an accent of some type - and the contents of those dingbats fonts. While I can get over activating the flag menu to get to the keyboard viewer, I find the actual keyboard viewer window almost too small to really see anything. I'd like it to be twice as big, as I usually end up activating zoom in universal access to be sure which way that accent is facing.

Bringing back Key Caps as an app or widget would be a good thing. And, yes, I have sent feedback.

[ASIMO]

Originally Posted by CharlesS

...where some guy was claiming that the PC was better for him because he has to communicate with people from Germany, and there's no way to enter an umlaut on the Mac.
...[/url]

Um...an umlaut as in gütentag? Can you not do this on your Mac?

Otherwise I agree wholeheartedly about the disappearance of the Key Caps/Keyboard Viewer application since 10.3. It vanished in 10.3, right?

[barney ntd]

Just to provide a bit of balance, I really like the new arrangement. Having to dig KeyCaps out of /Applications/Utilities was a pain, but in the keyboard menu, it's always available. If you miss the old stand-alone app, why not extract it from an old install disk? It will almost certainly still run.

Barney

[sminch]

asimo - i think his point was that the guy couldn't find the umlaut on the mac he was using cos the mac os had it hidden away in a difficult to find menu, so he'd assumed that you couldn't produce one on a mac.

as a newbie who has looked for umlauts, hirigana etc (and failed), i can vouch for the fact that the the keyboard viewer is nigh on impossible to find. hey, i'm stoked i read this thread!

sminch

[tom@bluesky.org]

The program KeyKaps lets you launch Keyboard Viewer from the Dock:

http://www.vadino.com/mac-os/utiliti...m/keykaps.html

[Mediaman_12]

Someone should do a 'Dashboard' version of the Keycaps app. They could then at least make it a useable size.
I's possible that it is actually the same 'pixel dimensions' as it always has, it's just as screen resolution has increased it's just 'visually' got smaller.

[Chuckit]

There's no reason a Dashboard app's size would be any more usable than a normal app's. The only thing Dashboard guarantees is that you're going to be chewing up memory like it's going out of style.

[tom@bluesky.org]

Have you never hit the 3rd (green) button at top left to make it larger?

[SpaceMonkey]

Originally Posted by sminch

asimo - i think his point was that the guy couldn't find the umlaut on the mac he was using cos the mac os had it hidden away in a difficult to find menu, so he'd assumed that you couldn't produce one on a mac.

as a newbie who has looked for umlauts, hirigana etc (and failed), i can vouch for the fact that the the keyboard viewer is nigh on impossible to find. hey, i'm stoked i read this thread!

sminch

Well, I have no idea offhand how to type accent marks and other special characters on my Windows 2000 box at work, so I don't think this is a particular failing of the Mac OS. It's just that generally, in the United States, special characters (apart from the most common ones that are right on the keyboard) just aren't used very often, and so they are naturally going to be in a tucked-away part of the OS.

The guy in question obviously didn't use the Help menu either. In Panther, if i type "special characters" into the Mac Help search box, the first hit on the results list tells me exactly how to get them. I imagine that if you use Tiger's Help Viewer you get similar results.

[saltines17]

edit: nevermind, i can't read

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by tom@bluesky.org

The program KeyKaps lets you launch Keyboard Viewer from the Dock:

http://www.vadino.com/mac-os/utiliti...m/keykaps.html

Looks great, but unfortunately the developer's site is DOA, so now download is available.

Originally Posted by barney ntd

Just to provide a bit of balance, I really like the new arrangement. Having to dig KeyCaps out of /Applications/Utilities was a pain, but in the keyboard menu, it's always available. If you miss the old stand-alone app, why not extract it from an old install disk? It will almost certainly still run.

Barney

I suppose that's the route I'll have to take. There was no reason for Apple to get rid of it in the first place.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by barney ntd

Just to provide a bit of balance, I really like the new arrangement. Having to dig KeyCaps out of /Applications/Utilities was a pain, but in the keyboard menu, it's always available. If you miss the old stand-alone app, why not extract it from an old install disk? It will almost certainly still run.

Because, like I said, hiding features in impossible-to-discover places will make it completely impossible for a newbie who doesn't read MacNN to find things. It is nonintuitive and just terrible interface design. A newbie doesn't know that he could extract Key Caps from the 10.2 install discs (and maybe he doesn't have any 10.2 install discs!), and a newbie doesn't know he can go through a 1,243,584,567 step process to activate the keyboard viewer. If it were with Special Characters in the Edit menu, it would be easily discoverable, but as it is, it's a bitch to find, and you basically have to have someone tell you about it.

Originally Posted by sminch

asimo - i think his point was that the guy couldn't find the umlaut on the mac he was using cos the mac os had it hidden away in a difficult to find menu, so he'd assumed that you couldn't produce one on a mac.

ding ding ding

Originally Posted by Chuckit

There's no reason a Dashboard app's size would be any more usable than a normal app's. The only thing Dashboard guarantees is that you're going to be chewing up memory like it's going out of style.

Dashboard widgets take up about the same amount of memory as normal apps in my experience.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by SpaceMonkey

Well, I have no idea offhand how to type accent marks and other special characters on my Windows 2000 box at work, so I don't think this is a particular failing of the Mac OS. It's just that generally, in the United States, special characters (apart from the most common ones that are right on the keyboard) just aren't used very often, and so they are naturally going to be in a tucked-away part of the OS.

That's because Windows doesn't have any method of entering special characters that is as simple or as easy to use as the Option key. You have to either use the character palette, use a 4-digit ALT code, or change the keyboard layout.

The guy in question obviously didn't use the Help menu either. In Panther, if i type "special characters" into the Mac Help search box, the first hit on the results list tells me exactly how to get them. I imagine that if you use Tiger's Help Viewer you get similar results.

Yeah, it tells you how to use the character palette. Real helpful, that. We're talking about the keyboard viewer, which shows you how to enter the characters many orders of magnitude more efficiently.

[SpaceMonkey]

Originally Posted by CharlesS

Yeah, it tells you how to use the character palette. Real helpful, that. We're talking about the keyboard viewer, which shows you how to enter the characters many orders of magnitude more efficiently.

Actually it describes how to use both the keyboard viewer and the character palette in the same entry. It's hardly an "impossible-to-discover" place.

I'd rather my keyboard layout/keyboard viewer/character palette be in one consistent location than scattered around the OS. If that location is in the menu bar, then so be it. And if special characters are so important to you, then the flag icon in the menu bar could hardly be called intrusive, as Big Mac seems to suggest.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by SpaceMonkey

Actually it describes how to use both the keyboard viewer and the character palette in the same entry.[/b]

Uh, actually it doesn't. It tells how to use the Character palette, and then has a single sentence at the end saying "You can also use the Keyboard Viewer to type special characters and symbols." but doesn't say at all how to activate it. It asks you to click a link which does another search, for "Keyboard Viewer", which turns up a number of links, a couple of which tell how to activate the keyboard viewer, most of which don't have anything except for one sentence at the end just like the character palette page. And since there isn't a page called "Activating the Keyboard Viewer", you have to use trial and error by clicking on each one of the pages, then going back and clicking another one until you find the right one. And once again, since the character palette is so emphasized and the keyboard viewer is so downplayed, I find it extremely unlikely that even one user will ever discover the keyboard viewer this way, but instead he/she will just assume that the character palette is what you are supposed to use.

And anyway...

It's hardly an "impossible-to-discover" place.

If you have to read the freaking manual to find it, that's the very definition of impossible to discover.

I'd rather my keyboard layout/keyboard viewer/character palette be in one consistent location than scattered around the OS. If that location is in the menu bar, then so be it. And if special characters are so important to you, then the flag icon in the menu bar could hardly be called intrusive, as Big Mac seems to suggest.

Uh, if it were in the Edit menu, as I suggested, then that would be in the menu bar. And since Special Characters is always in the Edit menu and can't be removed, this would cause the items to be more in one consistent location than they are currently.

[SpaceMonkey]

Originally Posted by CharlesS

Uh, actually it doesn't. It tells how to use the Character palette, and then has a single sentence at the end saying "You can also use the Keyboard Viewer to type special characters and symbols." but doesn't say at all how to activate it.

I'm not sure if you're using Panther or Tiger, but on Panther the help file I'm talking about instructs the user in the character palette, and then has this at the end: "You can also type special characters and symbols by pressing combinations of keys on your keyboard. To see what keys to press, turn on the Keyboard Viewer in the Input Menu pane of International preferences, and then choose Show Keyboard Viewer from the input menu in the menu bar. Press the Shift, Option, or Option and Shift keys simultaneously to see the characters that are available. To type a character, press the modifier key (or keys) and the key on your keyboard that's in the same location as the character you want to type in the Keyboard Viewer."

If this has been changed for Tiger, then that is disappointing.

If you have to read the freaking manual to find it, that's the very definition of impossible to discover.

Huh? Why are reading instructions so difficult? We're talking about, at best, a moderately-used feature of the OS for most users.

Uh, if it were in the Edit menu, as I suggested, then that would be in the menu bar. And since Special Characters is always in the Edit menu and can't be removed, this would cause the items to be more in one consistent location than they are currently.

It would only be in the menu bar for "native applications." As it stands, you get the character palette for "native applications" and you get the whole keyboard layouts/character palette/keyboard viewer package in the Input Menu, which is always available. I don't really understand how that's less consistent than what you're advocating.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by SpaceMonkey

I'm not sure if you're using Panther or Tiger, but on Panther the help file I'm talking about instructs the user in the character palette, and then has this at the end: "You can also type special characters and symbols by pressing combinations of keys on your keyboard. To see what keys to press, turn on the Keyboard Viewer in the Input Menu pane of International preferences, and then choose Show Keyboard Viewer from the input menu in the menu bar. Press the Shift, Option, or Option and Shift keys simultaneously to see the characters that are available. To type a character, press the modifier key (or keys) and the key on your keyboard that's in the same location as the character you want to type in the Keyboard Viewer."

If this has been changed for Tiger, then that is disappointing.

I'm using Tiger.

Huh? Why are reading instructions so difficult? We're talking about, at best, a moderately-used feature of the OS for most users.

Well, there's this whole thing called intuitive interface design, which has been one of Apple's major selling points since forever...

The reason that pull-down menus are better than a command line-driven interface in terms of UI is that pull-down menus let you explore all of an app's functions, to see what's there and what you can do... without reading a manual. Let's face it, most users don't read manuals. I don't like reading manuals either. It's a waste of time in cases when an app should have been written with an intuitive interface so that the manual would not have been necessary.

It would only be in the menu bar for "native applications." As it stands, you get the character palette for "native applications" and you get the whole keyboard layouts/character palette/keyboard viewer package in the Input Menu, which is always available. I don't really understand how that's less consistent than what you're advocating.

Well, I'm definitely not saying to remove the keyboard viewer from the input menu, just that it should be found in the same places where the character palette is found. I don't see why the character palette is right there in the Edit menu, but the keyboard viewer is buried. I think it's pretty safe to say that the characters offered by the keyboard menu are going to be used much more frequently than the more exotic ones that can only be found with the Character Palette.

It's not complicated at all - related features A and B are both found in place 1, but only A is in place 2 for no apparent reason. If both A and B were in both 1 and 2, that's obviously more consistent.

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by SpaceMonkey

Actually it describes how to use both the keyboard viewer and the character palette in the same entry. It's hardly an "impossible-to-discover" place.

I'd rather my keyboard layout/keyboard viewer/character palette be in one consistent location than scattered around the OS. If that location is in the menu bar, then so be it. And if special characters are so important to you, then the flag icon in the menu bar could hardly be called intrusive, as Big Mac seems to suggest.

Actually, I never called the menu intrusive, but if you meant to write obtrusive that's a better description of what I think about it. There's nothing wrong with the Input Menu, but it's used infrequently enough to in effect beg me to option drag it to oblivion. One of the characteristics of the Mac Way is that system functions should be accessible in multiple ways. It's just outright obvious: If Character Palette has an alternate access route, so too should Keyboard Viewer. It should have been placed in the Edit menu along with "Special Characters," in addition to its placement in the Input Menu. I'm glad CharlesS and others have recognized the same issue.

[Steve Bosell]

here is a script to open the character pallet link

[SpaceMonkey]

Originally Posted by Big Mac

Actually, I never called the menu intrusive, but if you meant to write obtrusive that's a better description of what I think about it. There's nothing wrong with the Input Menu, but it's used infrequently enough to in effect beg me to option drag it to oblivion. One of the characteristics of the Mac Way is that system functions should be accessible in multiple ways. It's just outright obvious: If Character Palette has an alternate access route, so too should Keyboard Viewer. It should have been placed in the Edit menu along with "Special Characters," in addition to its placement in the Input Menu. I'm glad CharlesS and others have recognized the same issue.

Okay, I misunderstood what you were saying before. I agree with this. I was mostly reacting to the suggestion that it was a mistake to remove the keyboard viewer as a stand-alone app. To me, the Input Menu is logically where it should be, because the special characters most people use are accent marks for foreign languages and the like.

[SpaceMonkey]

Originally Posted by CharlesS

I'm using Tiger.


Well, there's this whole thing called intuitive interface design, which has been one of Apple's major selling points since forever...

The reason that pull-down menus are better than a command line-driven interface in terms of UI is that pull-down menus let you explore all of an app's functions, to see what's there and what you can do... without reading a manual. Let's face it, most users don't read manuals. I don't like reading manuals either. It's a waste of time in cases when an app should have been written with an intuitive interface so that the manual would not have been necessary.

But there are only so many things you can make immediately obvious to the user. If I hadn't previously been familiar with key caps, using a separate application to get special characters might actually seem kind of odd to me. I think it's more intuitive to place it along with the international keyboard layouts, where people who routinely need to type special characters will likely stumble across it.

As a side note, if i type "accent marks" into the Panther help viewer, the first result is devoted entirely to keyboard viewer. I'm curious to know what happens if you do the same in Tiger.

Well, I'm definitely not saying to remove the keyboard viewer from the input menu, just that it should be found in the same places where the character palette is found. I don't see why the character palette is right there in the Edit menu, but the keyboard viewer is buried. I think it's pretty safe to say that the characters offered by the keyboard menu are going to be used much more frequently than the more exotic ones that can only be found with the Character Palette.

It's not complicated at all - related features A and B are both found in place 1, but only A is in place 2 for no apparent reason. If both A and B were in both 1 and 2, that's obviously more consistent.

Thanks for clarifying. I misunderstood what you were saying before. I agree having it in both the Edit menu and the Input menu would be helpful. I just found the earlier statement that keyboard viewer was more intuitive as a separate application kind of ridiculous.

[tom@bluesky.org]

Originally Posted by Big Mac

Looks great, but unfortunately the developer's site is DOA, so now download is available.

Sorry about that, was OK not too long ago. I'll send you a copy if you want one.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by SpaceMonkey

But there are only so many things you can make immediately obvious to the user. If I hadn't previously been familiar with key caps, using a separate application to get special characters might actually seem kind of odd to me. I think it's more intuitive to place it along with the international keyboard layouts, where people who routinely need to type special characters will likely stumble across it.

Like I said, I have no problem with it being there, but it should also be somewhere else, since most new users are not going to be able to find it in its present location.

Having it as a separate application was not the most intuitive thing ever, but at least it was easier to find than the current implementation. When it was in the Apple menu in OS 9, it at least had that element of "oh, here's a bunch of things in this menu, I wonder what this one does" for the curious user anyway. If it were in the Edit menu, or if there were a button in the Character Palette to invoke it, it would be more discoverable than any of these things.

Yeah, the current location is intuitive to people that routinely use international keyboard layouts. But what about everyone else? The advantage of the Option key is that you don't have to use an international keyboard layout just to be able to type accented characters easily. And I can tell you that people occasionally wanting to type special characters happens way more often than you think. Maybe someone is writing a history paper and needs to mention the name of some person who had an umlaut in his/her name. Maybe someone wants to type something that's in some other language into BabelFish to try to get a gist of what it means. Or maybe they just want to mention El Niño, or say that someone is naïve. There are obviously many reasons someone who is not a heavy keyboard layout user might want to insert the occasional diacritical. Apple seems to be presenting the character palette as a solution for these situations, and that's a shame, because it's much clumsier than option-e and option-u...

As a side note, if i type "accent marks" into the Panther help viewer, the first result is devoted entirely to keyboard viewer. I'm curious to know what happens if you do the same in Tiger.

Yeah, that particular search query turns it up. But my comment about having to RTFM still stands.

[Mediaman_12]

Originally Posted by tom@bluesky.org

Have you never hit the 3rd (green) button at top left to make it larger?

Good god, that makes it huge! (but at least it's easy to read) So no, I had never hit the green button to make it 'bigger', that's not the 'usual' action (making it all round larger) invoked from that button (it usually makes the window large enough to display all the contents, but not increase the 'size' of them).

[barney ntd]

I agree it makes sense to have it in the edit menu as well as the input source menu. I just think the current setup is better than the pre-panther stand-alone app. But then, I use a UK keyboard, with the US layout available for the few badly-written programs that crash without it.

Barney

[Brass]

Originally Posted by Chuckit

People get furious over weird stuff.

The flag takes up 22 pixels in your menu bar. That isn't a big burden to bear. If you want the functionality of the flag (i.e. input managers such as the Character Palette or Keyboard Viewer) so much, just leave it there. It's not suddenly going to grow to seven times its natural size and start eating everything in /Library. It's not Apple's fault that you choose to disable it and re-enable it every time you want to use it. For me, it's one step: choose "Keyboard Viewer" from the input menu.

I don't think you understand the problem...

Virtually all the menu-let thingies only provide functionality that is available elsewhere, and are therefore only an optional convenience. The keyboard viewer is ONLY available through the menu, and therefore is compulsory. It is therefore different to the others.

Some users don't like to have additionally items in their menu bars, either for aesthetic reasons, or because they have small screens, or because they use applications that require the full length of the the menu bar.

If that's not you, then fine, you're happy. However, there are many who fit into this category (as you can see from this thread).

Apple could easily cater for both types of people, by making it optional and providing another way to access the keyboard viewer (as they used to do). But instead they've chosen to make the menu compulsory to use the keyboard viewer.

So it is disappointing that Apple removed good functionality from the operating system in this way, and made it somewhat less useable for the many people who do not want that item in their menu bar (for whatever reason).