Out-of-box HotKeys at a glance -

We highly recommend you adopt Connexion Client or Firefox if you intend to input diacritics frequently.

Caveats/Cons	Features
DiacriticsB.MEX is offered with limitations. It may or may not be supported by the keyboard of a laptop 30% of the macros are not as fast as the Firefox extension version (Version A) When you run any of these macros, you may see the icon (Character Map) flash briefly in the taskbar.	The macro book performs in Chrome, Firefox, and Edge It does not require the installation of browser extensions. Actually, if you intend to run DiacriticsB.MEX, the Unicode Input extension must be off or removed from your web browser.

Configuration

Step 1: Enable hexadecimal Unicode input

Right-click Enable Alt+Hex NumPad.reg and download it to your computer

Double-click the reg file, click Yes → Yes → OK

Step 2: Download the macro book

Right-click DiacriticsB.MEX (last modified 09/22/2021) and download it

Step 3: Configure the Character Map

Double-click the mex file to activate the macro book

Run Shift + F1 to open the Windows Character Map, verify that -

Times New Roman is selected
the Advanced view is checked

Windows Character Map

Tip for troubleshooting

If for some reason you start to get incorrect and unfamiliar characters from the macros, it is a good idea to run Shift + F1 again and check that the font choice has not been altered and the Advanced view is on.

Close the Character Map.

Step 4: Reboot your computer

Run the macro

Now you should be able to input diacritics in the Metadata Editor.

1) Double-click DiacriticsB.MEX from the folder where you have saved the file to activate the Macro.This means the Macro Express icon will appears in the Windows notification area, typically hiding in the lower-right corner of your screen.

2) Click on the icon to see the list of diacritics/symbols and HotKeys. Alternatively, Diacritics-macro-hotkeys.pdf provides a clearer view of what keyboard shortcuts to apply for what diacritics and symbols.

Always place the cursor after some text or a subfield tag before running a macro. The character may not show up if the cursor is placed at the beginning of the field box.

3) If you use the macro on a daily basis, make Macro Express run automatically at startup so that you can skip step 1) above

Contingent

A. Musical flat symbol

The ♭ symbol is not supported by the Times New Roman font group. In order to type the symbol via the macro -

1) Open the Windows File Explorer to C:\

2) Right-click and create a new folder named Symbol

3) Right-click flat.txt

4) Select Save link as... and download it to the new folder C:\Symbol

You may close the File Explorer.

B. Resolve shortcut conflicts

The diacritics macro book contains about 100 characters and symbols. Some of the HotKeys may coincide with keyboard shortcuts already in use on your computer, for two main reasons.

1. A HotKey coincides with a keyboard shortcut of Alma, web browsers, a particular piece of software installed on your computer, and the Windows environment

2. Alma releases monthly updates and enables new keyboard shortcuts for new functions, creating conflict with the out-of-box macro Hotkeys

Most users need no more than half of the characters and symbols in the macro book. If you encounter a conflict, you may customize the out-of-box HotKeys in the diacritics mex file -

Righ-click any diacritic that you don't need and whose HotKey has no conflict, disable its macro

Visit Properties and swap its HotKeys for the macro you need

Sync shortcut keys

If you plan to input diacritics in both Alma and Connexion Client using shortcut keys, optionally you may sync those keys between the two platforms. This saves you the trouble of memorizing different sets of keys for the two cataloging environments.

Character sets

The macro book contains a slightly larger character set than Connexion Keymaps, as the former contains frequently used characters and combinations requested by staff members. The following letters and diacritics are in the macro book but not in Connexion's Keymaps.

Characters in DiacriticsB.MEX	Glyph	Connexion version
Combining double inverted breve	◌͡◌ a͡b	Ligature: left half and right half
Combining double tilde	◌͠◌ a͠b	Double tilde: left half and right half
Long a i u	ā ī ū	a / i / u + Macron
Greek Lower Numeral Sign	͵	N.A.
Greek Small Letter Koppa	ϟ
Greek Small Letter Sampi	ϡ

α, β, ü, † (dagger), and γ (gamma) are not included in Connexion's Keymaps either, but the mex file has been configured to generate these characters in Connexion Client.