Help

1. I can't see the special characters on the buttons!

If you just cannot see the symbols in the IPA keyboard, you probably need to install Lucida Sans Unicode, a Unicode font from Microsoft. Lucida Sans Unicode has a wider range of characters than popular fonts like Arial or Georgia.

If you cannot see the characters in the European language keyboards, you're probably using an unsupported browser (see question 4).

2. How do I install Lucida Sans Unicode on my system?

To install Lucida Sans Unicode on Microsoft Windows:

  1. Download Lucida Sans Unicode from a download link on this page.
  2. Locate the downloaded file (lsansuni.ttf) on your computer.
  3. Open the Control Panel, and then open the Fonts folder.
  4. Copy the file to the Fonts folder (e.g. by dragging it with your mouse).
  5. The font is now installed!

3. I can type the characters on your site, but when I paste them to my document, I get garbage!

Your target document probably uses a font that doesn't have all the necessary characters. Make sure you choose the right font in your document. For European languages, garden-variety fonts like Arial or Times will do fine; for IPA symbols, you will need Lucida Sans Unicode or another Unicode font which has IPA symbols.

4. The keyboard shortcuts and buttons don't seem to work properly.

Are you using one of the supported browser versions? TypeIt supports Internet Explorer 6/7/8, Mozilla Firefox 3, Safari 3 (Mac) and Google Chrome. If you use a supported browser version, please report any bugs to me at the e-mail address shown on the About page.

5. Some of the keyboard shortcuts don't work.

Let me guess: You are using a foreign (non-US) keyboard. Some national keyboards generate different key codes for certain keys like ; or / and TypeIt is unable to recognize them. For this reason, TypeIt provides a secondary keyboard shortcut in such cases. For example, when typing Spanish accents, the ¿ character can be typed by pressing either Ctrl+/ or Ctrl+2. You can use the secondary shortcut or just press the ¿ button on the toolbar, whichever you find less awkward.

6. How do I insert the special characters into an HTML page?

First of all, you shouldn't have to convert the characters into HTML entities (e.g. é or —). That is so 1990s! In the 21st century, all you need is a Unicode-capable editor (even the Windows Notepad will do fine):

  1. Open your HTML file.
  2. (optional) If your editor has an option to set the encoding of your file, set it to UTF-8.
  3. Copy your symbols from TypeIt and paste them into your HTML code in the editor. Some characters may appear as squares or question marks — this means that the particular character is missing from the font in your editor. The characters should render fine on the actual page provided that you've specified the proper font-family in your CSS.
  4. When you save your file, choose UTF-8 encoding. (This may not be necessary if you have already set the encoding in step 2.)
  5. Do one of the following:
    • Serve your page with the following HTTP header (you can specify the header in your Web server configuration or in the script which serves your page):
      Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8
    • Alternatively, add the following line to the <HEAD> section of your HTML file:
      <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">