Allchars

Computer text supports a great variety of character types, even though you don’t find all of them on a regular keyboard. However, special characters can be inserted in most types of text editors, either through the Character Map or built-in tools, but you can also rely on specialized applications like Allchars to insert particular characters and text macros in most types of text fields.

Setup takes a little while, so you quickly get the chance to check out the application’s set of features. It resides in the tray area, but you sooner or later need to bring up the main window in order to view the associated commands to trigger characters of interest. There are a couple of modes, namely characters, and text string macros.

The main window is composed of a side panel which displays all character groups, leaving most of the space to show related characters. You can choose from groups like accents, currency symbols, copyright, fractions, ligatures, lines and dots, math, punctuation marks, quotation marks, runic, superscripts, and several miscellaneous characters.

Although the target hotkey commands to insert characters can’t be edited, these are surprisingly intuitive, combining at least a couple of keyboard buttons depicting components of the resulting characters. Note, however, that the Ctrl key needs to be pressed, but not held down, just before you press hotkeys.

Last but not least, the application also comes with a text macro tool. It functions in a similar manner to the character inserter, but this one can be customized. It comes with several examples to quickly get you up and running. You can easily add a large string to be inserted at the press of custom combination of buttons.

Bottom line is that special characters are often difficult to insert with default text editor tools, especially in external fields. Luckily, Allchars supports an impressive variety of fields, including those inside browsers, comes with an intuitive insert mode, and a couple of components to easily add characters and custom strings.