Typing Apple symbols for Shift/Command/Option etc. into Illustrator?

[Thank The Cheese]

Helloooo,

I'm working on a tutorial that introductes windows-using students to Mac OS X. Part of the tutorial is explaining the symbols that appear next to menu items to denote shortcuts to various commands (like command, shift, option etc). I need to create a table that lists the symbol, and which keyboard key it corresponds with.

Problem I'm having is I cannot seem to find a way to get them into Illustrator, or type them at all.

I can get the Command key symbol from Wingdings, so that's OK, but I also need Option, Shift, Escape, and Delete, which I can't find anywhere.

I can type command and option using the HTML Character Set in Safari, like so:

⌥⌘

but copying and pasting them from Safari to Illustrator resulted in a question mark instead of the symbol I selected.

I have no idea where to find the Delete and Esc. key symbols.

Is there a way I can type these things into Illustrator, or perhaps a font set I can download?

cheers!

 

[barhar]

Apple symbol - &#8217;Geneva&#8217; - &#8216;<option><shift> K&#8217;
&#8217;Command&#8217; key - &#8217;Wingdings&#8217; - &#8216;Z&#8217;
<control> key - &#8217;Wingdings 3&#8217; - &#8216;<shift> S&#8217;
<option> key - &#8217;Wingdings 3&#8217; - &#8216;<shift> U&#8217;
<shift> key - &#8217;Wingdings&#8217; - &#8216;<option><shift> L&#8217;

Below is a snapshot of the desired symbols, etc.

 

[fryke]

They don't necessarily work in Illustrator, though. At least Geneva doesn't. And I don't seem to have the Wingdings fonts installed.

 

[barhar]

As per the provided snapshot (below), 'Geneva' does display (here) correctly with Adobe Illustrator CS2' version 12.0.0.

And yes, it appears that the 'Wingdings 2' and 'Wingdings 3' font set are from a 'Microsoft Office 2004' installation.

 

[fryke]

Strange... Definitely doesn't work for me in Illu 12.0.0 with Geneva (system supplied)... Maybe it's a language thing? No... Just tested with my English test account. Doesn't work either... :/

 

[Thank The Cheese]

luckily I do have Wingdings 3 installed, so it worked

I actually didnt even know Wingdings 2/3 existed on my system!

Is that the right symbol for the control key (the triangle with the line either side of the point)? I always thought it was just this: ^

I actually can't find a keyboard shortcut that uses control anywhere to confirm it myself -- mac apps really don't like the control key.

 

[ra3ndy]

I actually can't find a keyboard shortcut that uses control anywhere to confirm it myself -- mac apps really don't like the control key.

Sure there are, just look at the Keyboard Shortcuts list in Sys Prefs. And yeah, the symbol they use there is just ^ .

 

[barhar]

Yes, use ' ^ ' &#8217;Wingdings 3&#8217; - &#8216;<shift> T&#8217; (or '<shift> 6' in practically any non-Dingbat font), instead.

Typically, I identify, in print, the 'caps lock', 'control', 'esc', 'option', 'return', 'shift', 'tab', etc. keys as <caps lock>, <control>, <esc>, <option>, <return>, <shift>, <tab>, etc. Thus, if a key has a name printed on it, I describe said key as <key name>.
If a key does not have a name printed on it - such as the command key, I identify it as 'Command'.

 

[fryke]

Since the labels on the keys are different depending on the language version of the keyboard, it'd probably help to go with the _names_ of the keys and have a section which translates that. (Depends on who's going to read the document, of course, whether something like that's necessary...)