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KeyFinder & faxSTF — substitutes?
#17870 10/04/11 07:59 PM
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grelber Offline OP
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Mac OS X 10.7.1
While searching the Web for a replacement for the handy little Apple application KeyFinder (OS 9) — Apple abandoned it — I came across a comment about something called Art Director's Toolkit which does the same job as KeyFinder and is ostensibly part of OS X (somewhere), but neither I nor other interested parties can find it.

Anybody have a clue?

Same applies to faxSTF which was a gem of a piece of software included with my iMac DV SE running OS 9 (and still works like a charm). Smith Micro is flummoxed by Mac OS X Lion and doesn't (at least yet) offer the product.
A Web search yields nothing of value.

Re: KeyFinder & faxSTF — substitutes?
grelber #17872 10/04/11 08:14 PM
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Originally Posted By: grelber
Mac OS X 10.7.1
While searching the Web for a replacement for the handy little Apple application KeyFinder (OS 9) — Apple abandoned it — I came across a comment about something called Art Director's Toolkit which does the same job as KeyFinder and is ostensibly part of OS X (somewhere), but neither I nor other interested parties can find it.

Anybody have a clue?

Same applies to faxSTF which was a gem of a piece of software included with my iMac DV SE running OS 9 (and still works like a charm). Smith Micro is flummoxed by Mac OS X Lion and doesn't (at least yet) offer the product.
A Web search yields nothing of value.

Art Director's Toolkit site:apple.com - Google Search

Fax software is another matter... I used PageSender in the early days of OS X when the word on the street was that faxSTF had gone down the tubes, but its developer is discontinuing support of the app beginning with Lion.

I've got no idea what your faxing needs are, but did you ever check out either of the two on-line fax services that were mentioned in one of the docs to which I linked you back...well, back there?


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: KeyFinder & faxSTF — substitutes?
grelber #17876 10/04/11 09:34 PM
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Originally Posted By: grelber
... the handy little Apple application KeyFinder (OS 9) — Apple abandoned it

I still have a running iMac DV SE (Mac OS 9.1), and all I can find is a 1988 desk accessory called 'Key Finder', which won't open (Error of type 1). Could you please enlighten me about exactly what it does?


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Re: KeyFinder & faxSTF — substitutes?
alternaut #17878 10/04/11 09:43 PM
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The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: KeyFinder & faxSTF — substitutes?
artie505 #17886 10/04/11 10:08 PM
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Thanks, that's what I figured, but didn't want to assume. Your link also includes Thomas Reed's and Tom Gewecke's comments about the limitations* of a utility like Key Finder in the context of UniCode etc., and suggests (like I did elsewhere) the Character Palette/Character Viewer instead.

*) the main issue is the fact that there are fare more characters in a font than can be represented by the keyboard, even when using available modifier keys. Hence the utility duo Keyboard Viewer and Character Viewer. The idea seems to be that if you may have to go to the complete representation of a font's characters with a utility like Character Viewer because the font mapping won't allow a particular character to show up in Keyboard Viewer, you might as well go there right away.


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Re: KeyFinder & faxSTF — substitutes?
alternaut #17897 10/05/11 12:53 AM
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grelber Offline OP
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And that's why KeyFinder is such a gem.

The Art Director's Toolkit would seem to be an application for a price (although I didn't actually go to the App Store to check it out – like everything on Apple's site, it takes forever to load [remember I'm on dial-up]). So that's a non-starter. I had the impression in a couple of articles that it was part of OS X.

Re: KeyFinder & faxSTF — substitutes?
artie505 #17898 10/05/11 12:57 AM
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RE I've got no idea what your faxing needs are, but did you ever check out either of the two on-line fax services that were mentioned in one of the docs to which I linked you back...well, back there?

I fax very infrequently, generally only to recipients who won't accept "non-secure" communication due to privacy concerns. But when I do, I want/need a complete record of the transaction. The two online services are fee-for-service.

I use eFax (very, very infrequently) to receive faxes (via email in PDF format) – very convenient (and no fax spam).

Re: KeyFinder & faxSTF — substitutes?
alternaut #17899 10/05/11 01:04 AM
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Where in the reply panel does one find/select the bit "Originally Posted By:" followed by a box for quoted text?

I've been using italics to achieve that effect.

Re: KeyFinder & faxSTF — substitutes?
grelber #17903 10/05/11 01:45 AM
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Instead of clicking the Reply button when posting, you click the Quote button next to it. If you do that it's advisable to edit the text within the [quote] tags to contain only what you're responding to, rather than quoting a post in its entirety.


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Re: KeyFinder & faxSTF — substitutes?
grelber #17904 10/05/11 02:35 AM
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Just ran across this TidBits article on faxing in Lion that might be of use. Unfortunately no mention of logs etc. The comment section mentions that FaxSTF (as well as some other fax packages including eFax's) is a PPC app, which explains why it won't run on Lion and perhaps also why it hasn't been updated.


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Re: KeyFinder & faxSTF — substitutes?
alternaut #17907 10/05/11 08:44 AM
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Merci, re QOUTE button. I've been here so long that I don't remember ever having looked to the right of the REPLY button. Just like a cat, it was hiding in plain sight.
Now putting that info to use ...

Originally Posted By: alternaut
Just ran across this TidBits article on faxing in Lion that might be of use.


That article came up in earlier discussions. Explanatory, but leading to no real solution. As I mentioned, Smith Micro is flummoxed by 64-bit Lion.

That tidBITS site has some good stuff on it. It's been around according to the masthead for 21 years, and this is the first I've heard of it. It's bookmarked now.

Re: KeyFinder & faxSTF — substitutes?
grelber #17920 10/05/11 04:26 PM
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> The two online services are fee-for-service.

If I remember correctly, one of them allowed a free 3 page fax + cover sheet per day, which sounds like it may suit your needs.


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: KeyFinder & faxSTF — substitutes?
grelber #17921 10/05/11 04:29 PM
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Originally Posted By: grelber
And that's why KeyFinder is such a gem.

The Art Director's Toolkit would seem to be an application for a price (although I didn't actually go to the App Store to check it out – like everything on Apple's site, it takes forever to load [remember I'm on dial-up]). So that's a non-starter. I had the impression in a couple of articles that it was part of OS X.

I don't know if it makes a difference to you, but it's also available as a widget: Apple - Downloads - Dashboard Widgets - Art Directors Toolkit Widget


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: KeyFinder & faxSTF — substitutes?
grelber #17930 10/05/11 06:38 PM
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Originally Posted By: grelber
And that's why KeyFinder is such a gem.

I missed the text to which that served as a reply.

So... why such a gem then?

[vis-à-vis the amount of unicode chars we deal with nowadays, as alternaut's post indicated]:
Quote:
the main issue is the fact that there are far more characters in a font than can be represented by the keyboard,


Last edited by Hal Itosis; 10/05/11 06:38 PM.
Re: KeyFinder & faxSTF — substitutes?
Hal Itosis #17933 10/05/11 07:03 PM
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By George, I believe you've got it!
KeyFinder produces a complete grid of any font's character set (16 rows x 16 columns = 256 characters).
Clicking on any cell produces the keystroke combination to produce that character in a text. So, eg, the euro sign in Chicago is created by opt+shift+2; apple symbol is opt+shift+K.
That's why it's a gem.

Re: KeyFinder & faxSTF — substitutes?
artie505 #17934 10/05/11 07:10 PM
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Originally Posted By: artie505

I don't know if it makes a difference to you, but it's also available as a widget: Apple - Downloads - Dashboard Widgets - Art Directors Toolkit Widget


Apparently not ... Upon requesting widget download:

Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, root@localhost and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.
More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
Apache/2.2 Server at www.code-line.com Port 80

Re: KeyFinder & faxSTF — substitutes?
grelber #17937 10/05/11 07:25 PM
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Originally Posted By: grelber
KeyFinder produces a complete grid of any font's character set (16 rows x 16 columns = 256 characters).

That's exactly what Character Viewer does, although CV displays as many instances of those 16 rows in a scrollable window as there are fonts loaded.
Originally Posted By: grelber
Clicking on any cell produces the keystroke combination to produce that character in a text.

Likewise, CV highlights the character(s) involved, below which is an Insert button.


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Re: KeyFinder & faxSTF — substitutes?
grelber #17941 10/05/11 07:50 PM
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Originally Posted By: grelber
By George, I believe you've got it!
KeyFinder produces a complete grid of any font's character set (16 rows x 16 columns = 256 characters).
Clicking on any cell produces the keystroke combination to produce that character in a text. So, eg, the euro sign in Chicago is created by opt+shift+2; apple symbol is opt+shift+K.
That's why it's a gem.

But does it show how to get this char too? ⌘ or all these? ⇧ ⌥ ⎋
And does it tell you which fonts are actually (capable of) displaying them?

Re: KeyFinder & faxSTF — substitutes?
grelber #17945 10/05/11 08:33 PM
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I was taken to the same "Internal Server Error" screen. confused

By the way, did you get a chance to check out that free fax service?


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: KeyFinder & faxSTF — substitutes?
grelber #17953 10/05/11 09:34 PM
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Originally Posted By: grelber
By George, I believe you've got it!
KeyFinder produces a complete grid of any font's character set (16 rows x 16 columns = 256 characters).
Clicking on any cell produces the keystroke combination to produce that character in a text. So, eg, the euro sign in Chicago is created by opt+shift+2; apple symbol is opt+shift+K.
That's why it's a gem.

Uh, 265 characters is hardly all the characters in a font.

For that matter, fonts don't contain characters, they contain glyphs. Back in the bad old days (and I mean, really really bad), we were limited to only 8-bit representations of characters, and thus there were only 256 characters total. We got around that by using different fonts, so that we could get different glyphs for the same character. Thus, the character with code 97 (or 0x61 if you prefer hexadecimal notation for your numbers), would have a glyph that looked like a lower-case letter 'a' in a "U.S." font, but would look like a lower-case letter 'alpha' in a "Greek" font.

One problem is that, despite appearances, it was still the same character 97. Change your font (or ship your document to someone who didn't have your fonts installed), and your text appeared to change languages.

Another problem is that if you searched for a string containing an 'alpha' character, you'd find all the strings containing an 'a' character as well, because the search would actually be for strings containing "character 97", regardless of what it might look like.

And one side effect is that people would utter phrases like "type such-and-so to get ... in the Chicago font", just like you did above. The nearest correct phrasing is "type such-and-so to get character number ..., which in Chicago looks like ...".

Enter Unicode. We now have over a million characters, not a paltry 256, to play with. Each character has its own code (and its own official name). Thus character 97 (0x61) is LATIN SMALL LETTER A, and character 945 (0x03B1) is GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA. Changing fonts may make the glyph slightly different, for example by making it bold and/or italic, or changing the line thickness or serifs, but an 'alpha' will always be an 'alpha', never an 'a'.

Some fonts, especially the Asian ones, have thousands of glyphs in them. There's no way a teensy 16x16 grid could possibly list them all.


And yet, even Unicode still has vestiges of the old way of thinking. The range of characters from 0xE000 thru 0xF8FF is set aside as a "Private Use" area. Characters in this range purposely have no official definition, and can look like whatever the font wants them to look like. The last 48 characters of that range, from 0xF8D0 thru 0xF8FF, are considered OS-specific. That is, each operating system decides the meaning of those characters. The last one, at 0xF8FF, is usually given a glyph that represents the OS.

When the Unicode consortium refused to set aside a range of characters for Klingon, the Linux community responded by putting the Klingon alphabet in this range, with 0xF8FF being the Klingon Federation Symbol.

On OS X, that same character is the "solid apple" character, the one you get by typing shift-option-K on a U.S. Keyboard. Put that character in a document and send it to someone running Linux, and it'll look like a Klingon Federation Symbol.

Which keyboard you're using will affect what characters you can type and how you type them. Type shift-option-K on a "U.S. Extended" keyboard, and you'll get a RING ABOVE character (730, or 0x02DA).


The way to see all the characters available is with the Character Viewer. To get the Character Viewer, either select Edit → Special Characters... in any application that has that menu item (Finder, for example), or enable "Keyboard & Character Viewer" (In Lion, that's in System Preferences → Language & Text → Input Sources) and select "Character Viewer" from the Input menu (icon looks like a flag).

The way to find out how to type a character is with the Keyboard Viewer. (Enable it in System Preferences, then choose it from the Input menu.) You'll see a picture of your keyboard, and can try various combinations of modifier keys to see what each key will do. Keys that appear orange represent "dead keys"; type one, and nothing appears in your document, but the keyboard gets temporarily re-mapped so you can type otherwise inaccessible characters. "Dead keys" should more properly be called "lead-in keys", because they initiate multiple-key combinations. For example, on a "U.S." keyboard, the dead key option-e temporarily turns the ordinary key 'a' (LATIN SMALL LETTER A) into an 'á' (LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH ACUTE) key.

Or, find the character in the Character Viewer, and double-click it to type it into the current document.

Re: KeyFinder & faxSTF — substitutes?
Hal Itosis #17954 10/05/11 09:42 PM
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Originally Posted By: Hal Itosis
But does it show how to get this char too? ⌘ or all these? ⇧ ⌥ ⎋


Nope. Those characters aren't represented in any of font suitcases associated with Word in my OS 9.

Originally Posted By: Hal Itosis
And does it tell you which fonts are actually (capable of) displaying them?


Likewise no. Each font has a (relatively) unique makeup, and the grid associated with same shows it. One just has to select a front and inspect the grid.
As noted, fonts which are not 'transparent', such as Symbol, require KeyFinder (unless you've got a great memory or write it down on a cheat sheet (just like the good ol' days).

Re: KeyFinder & faxSTF — substitutes?
Hal Itosis #17955 10/05/11 09:44 PM
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Originally Posted By: Hal Itosis
Originally Posted By: grelber
By George, I believe you've got it!
KeyFinder produces a complete grid of any font's character set (16 rows x 16 columns = 256 characters).
Clicking on any cell produces the keystroke combination to produce that character in a text. So, eg, the euro sign in Chicago is created by opt+shift+2; apple symbol is opt+shift+K.
That's why it's a gem.

But does it show how to get this char too? ⌘ or all these? ⇧ ⌥ ⎋
And does it tell you which fonts are actually (capable of) displaying them?


I'm not sure where this discussion is going (replacement software?) but I could get ⌘ and ⏎, also ⌫ even ➉ using PopChar , a very unobtrusive piece of software that has been around on the Mac for close to forever, and is supported on Lion (as well as earlier versions).


On a Mac since 1984.
Currently: 24" M1 iMac, M2 Pro Mac mini with 27" BenQ monitor, M2 Macbook Air, MacOS 14.x; iPhones, iPods (yes, still) and iPads.
Re: KeyFinder & faxSTF — substitutes?
artie505 #17956 10/05/11 09:47 PM
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Originally Posted By: artie505
By the way, did you get a chance to check out that free fax service?


Which one? The various ones I've checked out involve a lot of 'diddling'.

I just want my faxSTF back! Bad Smith Micro!! If I can suffer through the time and trouble and turmoil (especially psychological) of learning OS X Lion by the bootstraps, then SM can come up with a Lion version.

Re: KeyFinder & faxSTF — substitutes?
Ira L #17965 10/05/11 11:29 PM
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Originally Posted By: Ira L
I'm not sure where this discussion is going (replacement software?) but I could get ⌘ and ⏎, also ⌫ even ➉ using PopChar , a very unobtrusive piece of software that has been around on the Mac for close to forever, and is supported on Lion (as well as earlier versions).

i almost mentioned PopChar a few posts back, but i hadn't used it since OS 9, and wasn't sure how far it had come.


[still feeling stunned over the news of Steve's death at the moment]

Re: KeyFinder & faxSTF — substitutes?
grelber #17977 10/06/11 05:03 AM
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Originally Posted By: grelber
Originally Posted By: artie505
By the way, did you get a chance to check out that free fax service?


Which one? The various ones I've checked out involve a lot of 'diddling'.

I just want my faxSTF back! Bad Smith Micro!! If I can suffer through the time and trouble and turmoil (especially psychological) of learning OS X Lion by the bootstraps, then SM can come up with a Lion version.

Take a look at FaxZero.


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
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