Curly braces, Pipes, Escape and other characters on the Zaurus
Monday, 21 July 2003
If you've ever tried to type code, pseudo-code or shell scripts on the Sharp Zaurus, you may have noticed that the little slide-out keyboard is missing some useful keys. If you've done much typing with this thumb-keyboard, you may have noticed that when you fat-finger a couple of keys, you can get some of those extra characters. For my reference as much as yours, here's a short list:
| keys | character | unicode value | name |
|---|---|---|---|
| [Fn]+z | 0x005A(?) | undo | |
| [Fn]+[Shift]+c | € | 0x20AC | euro symbol |
| [Fn]+[Shift]+[Backspace] | [ | 0x005B | left square bracket |
| [Fn]+[Shift]+, | ] | 0x005D | right square bracket |
| [Fn]+[Shift]+. | { | 0x007B | left curly brace |
| [Fn]+[Shift]+[Enter] | } | 0x007D | right curly brace |
| [Fn]+[Shift]+' | ^ | 0x005E | caret/circumflex |
| [Fn]+[Shift]+[Space] | ` | 0x0060 | tick/backquote |
| [Shift]+[Space] | | | 0x007C | pipe |
| [Shift]+[Tab] | \ | 0x005C | backslash (note that this is listed incorrectly in the sharp doc) |
In the table above, "[Fn]" means the purple "function" key, "[Shift]" means the arrow-up "shift" key, "[Backspace] means the white back-arrow/delete key, "[Enter]" means the purple "return" key, "[Space]" means the space bar, "[Tab]" means the purple tab key, and a "+" means hit these keys in combination, typically by holding down the "meta" keys first.
Also notice that the "Cancel" button works like "Escape", which makes VI usable without resorting to the on-screen (virtual) keyboard.
There's a full keycode mapping table available on Sharp's site.