Keyboard & Character Viewer "broken"

I'm having trouble with the above utility to view and insert special characters when typesetting. Whenever I try and launch the viewer I get a "flashing" window with an activity circle, but it never shows the actual character viewer. It just keeps flashing every five seconds or so and slows down my computer from doing anything else.
I'm also using Linotype's FontExplorer X Pro (2.0.3) and wonder if there's an incompatibility. I've contacted them and they know of no problem.
thank you.

HI,
According to this link FontExplorer X Pro supports 10.6.x
http://www.fontexplorerx.com/pro/
Go to ~/Library/Preferences, and delete com.apple.CharPaletteServer.plist
and com.apple.CharPaletteCache.plist
and com.apple.recentitems.plist
Move the 3 .plist files ot the Trash and restart your Mac.
Carolyn

Similar Messages

Cannot enable keyboard & character viewer

After a fresh install of 10.7.5, I cannot enable the keyboard & character viewer. Neither the checkbox will stay checked, nor does the option appear in the input sources menu...
Any ideas?
Thanks,
Klaus

Thanks, Tom, for your speedy reply.
This is what the Terminal commands produced:
Last login: Sat May 11 21:33:45 on console
You have mail.
Macintosh-7:~ klausblume$ sudo rm /System/Library/Caches/com.apple.IntlDataCache*
Password:
Macintosh-7:~ klausblume$ sudo rm /var/folders/*/*/-Caches-/com.apple.IntlDataCache*
rm: /var/folders/*/*/-Caches-/com.apple.IntlDataCache*: No such file or directory
Macintosh-7:~ klausblume$
No such file or directory
As far as Onyx is concerned, the homepage is flogging MacKeeper (ugh). Is Onyx MacKeeper in disguise?

Keyboard character view list disappeared?

Hey
I recently update my mac os mountain lion ( not upgraded but just normal update from the app store ) and since then when I click on the country flag which is the language I don't see the keyboard character option to go to the list while before I was able to do it like to write arrows or something else
so how can I retunr the option to the keyboard list?
ty

Go to the Language & Text system preferences and in the Input Sources tab check the option to enable these items as an input source to use (in the list to the left).

How do i use the character viewer

can anyone tell me the system in using the character viewer, i can drag and drop but surley there must be and easier way than that!
Thanks.

From Mac Help:
Enter special characters and symbols
Use the Character Viewer to enter special characters and symbols, such as mathematical symbols, letters with accent marks, emoticons, arrows and other “dingbats,” into your documents.
You can also use the Character Viewer to enter Japanese, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, and Korean characters, as well as characters from other languages.
Enter special characters or symbols from the Character Viewer
Open a document, and place the insertion point where you want the special character or symbol to appear.
Choose Edit > Special Characters to open the Character Viewer, or choose Show Character Viewer from the Input menu in the menu bar (looks like a flag or character).If you don’t see Show Character Viewer in the Input menu, follow the steps in this topic to show the Character Viewer in the menu bar.
Select a category from the list on the left, and then select the character you want to use.Use the Recently Used or Favorites sections in the Character Viewer to quickly enter frequently used characters or symbols.
Add a character or symbol to the Favorites section in the Character Viewer
Choose Edit > Special Characters to open the Character Viewer, or choose Show Character Viewer from the Input menu in the menu bar (looks like a flag or character).If you don’t see Show Character Viewer in the Input menu, follow the steps in this topic to show the Character Viewer in the menu bar.
Select a category from the list on the left, and then drag the character you want to the Favorites section.
Customize the Character Viewer
If you don’t see the character or symbol that you want to use, try customizing the Character Viewer.
Choose Customize List from the Action pop-up menu (looks like a gear) in the top-left corner of the Character Viewer.
Select the categories that you want to appear in the Character Viewer, and then click Done.
Show the Character Viewer in the menu bar
If the character doesn’t appear in your document, you may be using an app that doesn’t support that character. Try using a different character or inserting the character in a different app.
See the special characters or symbols you can enter using keyboard shortcuts
You can use the Keyboard Viewer to help you learn which keyboard shortcuts to use to enter special characters or symbols.
Turn on the Keyboard Viewer
Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click Language & Text, and then click Input Sources
Select the Keyboard & Character Viewer checkbox.
Make sure the checkbox next to each input source you want to use is selected and that “Show Input menu in menu bar” is selected.
See the special characters or symbols you can enter
Choose Show Keyboard Viewer from the Input menu in the menu bar (looks like a flag or character).
Press any modifier key or combination of modifier keys to see the different special characters or symbols you can type.For example, hold down the Option key or the Option and Shift keys.
To place a special character or symbol that you see in the Keyboard Viewer in your document, press the modifier key or keys you pressed in step 2 and press the key on your keyboard that is in the same place as the special character or symbol you see in the Keyboard Viewer.
If you don’t see the special character or symbol you want to use, enter the special characte

Show Keyboard & Character Viewers setting not working

I like to have access to the Keyboard and Character Viewers in the menu bar; however, the setting on my new MacBook does not work. I have checked the "Show Keyboard & Character Viewers in menu bar" many times and it unchecks itself as soon as I leave the Keyboard tab of the Keyboard setttings in System Preferences.
Could a preference file be corrupted? (I migrated data from my old MacBook (OS 10.7) to my new MacBook (10.9). Perhaps this has something to do with the problem?)
Or, is there a command line way to show the preference that might stick better than the checkbox in the System Preferences?
Any insights would be appreciated.
Thanks,
-Robert.

BikerBob wrote:
The Input Sources menu has to be enabled to show the Keyboard & Character Views menu, which appears under the Input Sources menu. This was not the case in Mac OS 10.7, which I was previously using.
However, it is odd that the Keyboard & Character Views option is not greyed out in the Keyboard tab when the Input Sources menu is not enabled.
Indeed, the way Apple has done this in Mavericks seems both odd and cumbersome. I think it would be worth telling them so at
http://www.apple.com/feedback
The official instructions assume you have already enabled the input sources menu:
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH13746

Character viewer & Currency Symbols

Yosemite 10.10.3
I have been trying to access the shortcuts or whatever for various currencies other than $. I found this on the internet (I know it is not Apple but it is easier to read than anything I have found in these support circles) http://www.maketecheasier.com/type-euro-sign-mac/. I was able to navigate to enter a € symbol but am using many different currencies and need to have access to all.
I have gone to System Preferences > Keyboard and have checked the box for 'Show Keyboard & Characters in Menu Bar'. I navigated to 'Input Sources' but do not see the option to include the Keyboard & Character Viewer in the list area as it shows on this link. I do not see mention of it in any other of the support posts so perhaps this is an old feature.
The following Apple support post How to type accents, emoji, and symbols on your Mac - Apple Support indicates that I should be able to find currencies as a special character. But when I follow those instructions I don't see that I have options for currencies:
Can someone point me in the right direction?
Message was edited by: agremminger
I meant to add a screen shot of the 'missing' character viewer on the input sources tab.

I see the character viewer now on the menu bar with the flag. From here it appears that I can view the currencies too.

How to get character viewer to show a specific font

Previously you could specify a font to see it's characters and glyphs. Now I don't see how to do that. What am I missing? or has that gone the way of font specification in the keyboard viewer too?

Yes, this feature has been omitted from Lion Character Viewer. You might try PopChar. And you can ask Apple to put it back here:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

How to get Character Viewer to stay visible (esp. in Word for Mac)?

I'm asking this on behalf of a friend who has a 2013 13-inch (non-retina) MackBook Pro and uses it with an Apple Cinema Display. Since the upgrade to Mavericks the behaviour of the Character Viewer has changed, where it no longer 'sticks' (stays both active and on top) as a visible window when you switch applications: now it needs to be called up from within each application, and will be visible when working with that app.
He needs the Character Viewer open all the time and this change is inconvenient (he draws special characters from it constantly). But the main problem is that he mostly works in MS Word for Mac and as far as I can tell Microsoft have not updated Word to respect the behaviour Mavericks intends for Character Viewer: to stay visible while working. Instead, the Character Viewer window randomly closes. So, while hoping for an update from MS (but not holding breath since they provide their own inferior version of a glyph viewer in Word)) I have two questions:
1. Can anyone suggest a way, perhaps using Applescript or Automator (which I don't know how to use), to make the Character Viewer always stay open and visible while using any application? This would be the preferable solution, in effect restoring the behaviour seen before Mavericks.
Or
2. Can someone give us some guidance on how to make a custom keyboard shortcut in Word for Mac that we could assign to bring up the (OSX) Character Viewer, since the usual system shortcut for that (control-command-space) is not respected in Word. Or alternatively, an Applescript or Automator solution for this that would be available from within Word?
Thanks!

Did you try:
->System Preferences->Keyboard and check [ ] Show Keyboard & Character Viewers in menu bar
It closes when I switch desktops with spaces or open another App, but it displays when I go back to the Word window

Where is character view in 10.9.4?

I used to have in the old MacBook Air (OS 10.7.5) in the banner in the desktop window next to the computer name/date/clock/battery displays. On the new Air (10.9.4) I got nada. I went through system prefs, lightly googled, found nothing on "help," etc. Is it just gone in this version? I need it because I used accents in Mail, Word, Safari, etc.

The item used to be accessed from System Preferences> International> Input Menu.
Should be there -or in similar location- even now... Did you try a search?
OS X Mavericks: Use input sources to type in other languages
support.apple.com › Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click Keyboard, then click Input ...
search for a language or input source, then select one or more input sources. ...
Spell check foreign languages in Pages 09 MacBook Air, OS X Mavericks (10.9.1) ...
OS X Mavericks: Use the Keyboard Viewer - Apple
support.apple.com › From the Input menu (looks like a flag or character) in the menu bar, choose the
input source for the language whose keyboard you want to view. Choose Show ...
OS X Mavericks: Enter special characters and symbols - Apple
support.apple.com ›
Option, Description. Open the Character Viewer: In a document, choose Edit > Special
Characters. Or choose Show Character Viewer from the Input menu ...
OS X Mavericks: Change the language your Mac uses - Apple
support.apple.com › Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Language & Region. ... typed
using the input source that's currently selected in the Input menu (looks like ...
If the Character Viewer isn’t shown in the Input menu, choose Apple menu > System Preferences,
click Keyboard, Keyboard viewer, then select “Show Keyboard & Character Viewers in menu bar.”
Hopefully this helps; usually in the installed Help viewer is also a place to look up topics.
Good luck & happy computing!

How do you add a dingbat to character viewer in order to select it?

I understand that being unicode pages cannot use ITC Zaph dingbats from the keyboard that i need to use the special characters. very awkward! but how do i insert a character from zaph dignbat into special characters?
thank you

If I open Font Book, and choose named font, I can see a list of symbols, e.g.
If I open Character Viewer, and switch to Pictographs, I can see something like this
so I assume that named font includes chars in the category Pictographs, which you can use at ease, I hope.
If you need them frequently, you may create your custom keyboard layout, if you wish this, come back with what you wish.
Screenshots are in Lion, but the procedure is the same, I hope.

Glyph View in Character Viewer?

Back in Snow Leopard, we had the possibility to view all characters of a certain font if we selected "View>Glyph" in the character viewer. In Lion, this option seems to be missing. Is there any way to browse all characters of a specific font?
The reason I need this: I have several special fonts with symbols for scientific work (really specialized fonts, with characters you won't find in the symbols Apple provides). In SnowLeopard, they didn't show up in the character viewer as normal symbols, but in Glyph View one could select the font and then all characters were displayed, so one could easily select the right symbol (my friends using Windows could even assign a keyboard shortcut for each character in their character viewer).

No, thanks. That still doesn't let you show the characters that are availalble for a particular font. That big assortment of arrows it's showing? Essentially useless, because they're not available in any font I can find.
I did discover a cumbersome workaround by using both Font Book and Character Viewer.
1. Go into Font Book and select the "custom" preview. Put the cursor in that editable preview area.
2. Now go over to Character Viewer and double-click the character or symbol you're interested in. It will be pasted into the "custom" preview of Font Book. However, there's a bug; for some reason after the special character is pasted in, the glyphs that were showing for the font will return to being boxes. You have to select a different font and come back, in order to display the glyphs again.
You can now use the up/down arrow keys to step through all the fonts in Font Book and at least see which fonts have the character(s) you're looking for.

Character viewer is user rude

Character viewer cannot be minimized which means every time I want to use it I have to open it from the menu bar. Is the new version of OSX going to rectify this?

PBFZ wrote:
every time I want to use it I have to open it from the menu bar.
No you don't, just use the keyboard shortcut command - control - space.
I think you can be sure that Yosemite will not change the way Character Viewer works.

Character Viewer

Character Viewer displays thousands of glyphs or images of characters, but it does not identify the Font and/or Keystroke needed to type the character. Double clicking does insert the character. Selecting the character then identifies the Font name, but choosing that Font name, no combination of keystrokes reproduces the character. Is there a way to identify the Font/Keystrokes of these characters in Character Viewer or Keyboard Viewer?
For example: Character:Pictographs displays a Caduceus. Double clicking it inserts the Caduceus image in an Excel cell. Selecting that image in Excel identifies the Font as Menlo Bold. However, using Menlo Bold as a Font there seems no Keystroke that will type that image. In Font Book examining Menlo Bold reveals a huge number of letters/symbols/images available, but no information about how to type them. Indeed, there are so many images there can't possibly be enough keystroke combinations to cover them all. I'm confused.
(Note to Admin. If this query is in wrong forum please move it)

So thanks, that sort of helps. However, I quickly learned that Office does not respond to the System Preference settings (I set opt-c to type a caduceus), while Mail does. I guess Apple software does and others don't? Word and Excel do respond to Character Viewer double click insertions. Does opt-c ç becomes caduceus? ç, NO, guess not. But Character Viewer produces ⚕. So Safari in this message does not respond to System Preferences either. Filemaker doesn't either. Just where does System Preferences:Language & Text:Text:symbol/text substitution work? Is there some other step that makes it work in Office, Filemaker, et. al.? I sort of feel like 1984 all over again. When I first got my MacPlus fonts were truly fascinating, and what the Mac allowed me to do with fonts seemed awesome (until Multifinder came along it was the neatest thing). I bought programs that let you draw your own fonts-I had Suitcases full of them and even memorized ASCI. Now all I really want is a single keystroke that will type a caduceus in MS Word. Please don't advise me to switch to AppleWorks or Pages. Clearly Character Viewer sends some code (?ASCI) to Word that inserts a caduceus. Is there a way I can do that without having to stop typing and start clicking after opening Character Viewer? I know I can save the caduceus in Clipboard and use Com-v for caduceus, but I use the Clipboard for other stuff too often. Clipboard? Does that date me too? Frankly, I miss it.

"Font Variation" in character viewer

Well, now that I've made the ghastly mistake of "upgrading" to 10.9....
Is there any way to make the "Font Variation" aspect of Character Viewer behave the way it did in 10.6? I want to see all the font names all the time, each under its glyph, not just the font of a single glyph when I click on it. How do I know which fonts contain a particular character?

Tom Gewecke wrote:
I think the app Ultra Character Map can do what you want.
Most apps will automatically use a font which has the character, even if you have selected one that does not.
Yup. I can remember when users of That Other Platform had to have it explained to them that Font Substitution is good and useful and desirable. That was only about 10 years ago. For that matter, I can also remember when "Font Substitution" meant that your printer replaced New York with Times. I definitely don't miss that stage! But there are still times I'd like to know which fonts actually contain a given character.
I'll have to assume that all the other useful features are also gone:
show character selected in application
paste into application (as an alternative to using the Unicode Hex Input keyboard layout, which always smacks of Windows circa 2002)
built-in link to FontBook application
list option to show all fonts containing a particular glyph
Sigh.
Ultra Character Map may indeed be what I want. $9.99. Thanks, Apple! It riles me that someone decided all these features are not only unnecessary but actively harmful, requiring their removal from OS > 10.6. There's no way to downgrade your operating system, is there?

Character viewer all screwed up

Suddenly when I open the character viewer I don't get what I used to get.
I'm looking for "accented Latin" but it's gone
AND
The columns on the left are squeezed narrow so that I can't read them. And I can't change the width.
Anyone?

Yes, the new Character Viewer is difficult to say the least.
The window and the divider are moveable; however, the cursor doesn't change to notify you that it is possible. Just click there and drag.
Latin is an option in the left column, and the display will have every latin character with and without accents.
It is possible to type just about any accented character using the Extended keyboard layouts.
The basic chording keys are on all latin keyboards, but the extended keyboards have almost all of them.
If you are not aware of what I mean by "chording," you can type accented characters from the keyboard by using the Option (alt) key with a specialy chording key + character you want accented.
The basic keyboards have `´~¨^
To type ö, press opt-u, then o.
As I stated, there are more accents available on the Extended keyboards. There doesn't appear to be a British extended, but there is an Irish, if that has a similar layout.
You can view the chording keys on any keyboard layout by opening the Keyboard Viewer and pressing the Option key. They turn orange.

Keyboard & Character Viewer "broken"

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