Keyboard Viewer is way too small. It's too hard to see what the dingbats and webdings are even with a handheld magnifying glass. We aren't all teenagers with 20/20 vision! In Webdings, complex designs such as different hemispheres of the planet simply can't display in this nano size. These are option/shift-g (Australia/Asia), Option/shift-z (Africa/Europe), Option/shift-x (North & South America). Guess what is at those locations in Keyboard Viewer?? You'll probably have to guess even if you go look! At Option/shift-z it looks like either a squirrel with a fluffy tail, or maybe it's a mickey-mouse-ears hat. I can't tell!
If I select a large point size (34 and up) and start going across each row of the keyboard in any text program, what appears on the screen is a full set of graphic diagrams and icons. Even more complex ones appear when I repeat this process while holding down Shift, and then again for shift/Option. But for the webdings font's third level -- with option and shift held down -- Keyboard Viewer shows mostly blank oblongs. It even shows wrong icons: e.g. for option/shift-backslash (\, at the extreme right of the row), there's some unidentifiable black horizontal block instead of the complex diagram of a cellphone which is what I see when I type this character at 34 points!
This Keyboard viewer is truly unsatisfactory. And there doesn't seem to be a way to enlarge it.
I used to have a third-party character-set viewer and selector which accurately showed what each key could access down to that third level, and they were all big enough to see what they were. But that was for System 7....
What is available to fill this gap for Tiger (10.4.10)?
Although I see merit in "Cover-flow" and other features, I am not ready to buy the upgrade to Leopard yet. According to numerous reviewers, the first version is too buggy for upgrading older machines. If I have any money next year maybe I'd get a new or refurbished machine with Leopard already installed. (Did anyone put a better character-set viewer into Leopard?)
(What's after Leopard? Saber-Toothed Cat??)
Mary-Sue
If you hold down the control key and then use the wheel to scroll up that will magnify the screen image. Scrolling down returns it to nornal.
There is an option to increase the size of the keyboard viewer - just click on the third button in the row at the top left of the Keyboard Viewer window - it will show a little "+" sign and voila - the new, improved BIG keyboard viewer (see image below). New as of Tiger if I remember correctly and wasn't widely documented. While it greatly helps, it still does not display symbol fonts well, and does seem confused by certain file formats. For example, the included "Zapf Dingbats", which is a TrueType Data fork font, does not display any symbols in the Keyboard Viewer, but the Postscript type 1 "ITC Zapf Dingbats" from Adobe works perfectly. Guess we need a third-party to jump on this - unfortunately the superb Linotype Font Explorer (what? you don't have it? its free!) uses Apple's Keyboard Viewer so no help there... anybody know of a good, well, insanely great keyboard font previewing program?
Quote from: Dan Millar on December 28, 2007, 05:43:29 AM
There is an option to increase the size of the keyboard viewer - just click on the third button in the row at the top left of the Keyboard Viewer window - it will show a little "+" sign and voila - the new, improved BIG keyboard viewer (see image below).
Nice tip! First time I read it, I didn't realize initially you meant the 'green' zoom button in the keyboard viewer window. The screenshot image, which makes everything clear, apparently does
not display if one is
not logged into the Mugoo message board.
...b
PS. This tip works continues to work in OS X 10.5.x Leopard. And for those who don't know, don't bother looking for the Keyboard Viewer in /Applications or /Applications/Utilities. Instead, you first open the
International preference pane, click on the
Input Menu button, and then check
Keyboard Viewer. Then check Show Input menu in menu bar. Close the preference pane. You'll now have a new menubar item that appears as a small flag (typically US or Canaddian). Click on it to drop its menu and select
Show keyboard Viewer. Whew!
Here's a nice, illustrated walk-through: http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/2896/mac_os_x_use_the_keyboard_viewer_to_identify_special_character_keystrokes