ascii - Why does [ALT+224] return Ó instead of alpha?

I'm on WIN 7. I found that windows is using ANSI, not ASCII. So when I type ALT + 224 i get Ó, instead of α. To get α I have to manually copy it from the windows character map every time I want to use it. As you can imagine, this gets very tedious when I am trying to type in Attic Greek. Is there no combination to enter α? If not, is there some solution to this?

Answer

As you have already discovered, the characters resulting from character codes between 0 and 255 depend entirely on the encoding that is used.

Windows doesn't use neither extended ASCII nor ANSI (usually Windows-1252); it actually depends on the application.

For example, Alt + (2, 2, 4) gives on my machine:

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  α in Notepad and on the command prompt.

  
  


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  à in Google Chrome's omnibox, but α in its console and this very text area.

  
  


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  In Notepad++, a with ANSI, α with UTF-8.

  
  

For a more consistent behavior, just use Unicode character codes:

The key combination Alt + (9, 4, 5) – or Alt + (+, 3, B, 1) if you set the registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Input Method\EnableHexNumpad to 1 – should result in a α in every application that supports that character.

Sadly, that isn't the case:

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  The decimal char code results in ▒ in IE's address bar, while the hexadecimal one just beeps.

  
  


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  The decimal char code results in ▒ in Notepad++ with ANSI and ¦ with UTF-8.

  
  


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  The hexadecimal char code results in a in Notepad++ with ANSI and α with UTF-8.

  
  

Summary

1. 
   

   Set HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Input Method\EnableHexNumpad to 1.

   
   


2. 
   

   Use Alt + (9, 4, 5) or Alt + (+, 3, B, 1) in applications with full Unicode support.

   
   


3. 
   

   Fall back to trial and error in applications that lack full Unicode support.