Why no degree symbol on keyboards?

I have never looked for it, but I wonder if there is a keyboard manager (under window settings) which would let you reprogram a key to be something else. Like change ~ to °.
 
I have never looked for it, but I wonder if there is a keyboard manager (under window settings) which would let you reprogram a key to be something else. Like change ~ to °.
Pretty sure there is and if not, "charmap" has existed in Windows for decades. Problem with remapping keys is trying to remember what key or key combination does what now.
 
Pretty sure there is and if not, "charmap" has existed in Windows for decades. Problem with remapping keys is trying to remember what key or key combination does what now.
Labelmaker to the rescue! Well worth having one on the desk.
 
When someone writes a temperature in degrees, they may use an asterisk, as in 25*F. Why isn't there a proper small circle symbol on keyboards instead of the asterisk? That there isn't room on the keyboard, isn't an excuse. There are many symbols that get used even less that ARE on the keyboard like ~ ` | ^ and before the internet, # or @.
All those extra symbols ` | ^ are you mention are used by computer programmers……

I google odd symbols and then copy and paste them.
 
When someone writes a temperature in degrees, they may use an asterisk, as in 25*F. Why isn't there a proper small circle symbol on keyboards instead of the asterisk? That there isn't room on the keyboard, isn't an excuse. There are many symbols that get used even less that ARE on the keyboard like ~ ` | ^ and before the internet, # or @.
All those extra symbols ` | ^ are you mention are used by computer programmers.
 
I keep a link to this site on my desktop. Very handy.
 
No room on the keyboard for something that isn't that important. Those symbols are used in the IT world, as well as the function keys at the top.
I've got <>^ but no down pointing character. What's up down with that?
That's just the letter V

^ is a caret in mathematics.
 
Well, let me tell you something - just realized when I put the Tahoe on Tow/Haul - the voltage gauge flips to transmission temp - took an 8 mile trip and it stayed @/below 180° F < Check it out 😷
 
Alternatively, start reporting all temperatures in Kelvin, where the use of the degree symbol is incorrect.

I'm sitting here now with it a chilly 270K.
 
I just put an F or C after the number for temperature but in certain situations I'll use an apostrophe like " turn 45' to your left".
 
- The degree symbol isn't part of ASCII, so it's not on the keyboard. Keyboards only did ASCII in the earlier years.

- When it became part of the upper-128 alphabet on the PC, laser printers took font cartridges, costing about $100 a pop.
Not many could afford multiple cartridges. You needed a math cartridge back then, so only one dept. even considered buying that cartridge.
You also needed a PC. If you took the document to another PC and printed w/o the math cartridge, you'd get something that didn't look like a degree symbol. Or, nothing.

- The guys really needing to author math used TeX; later LATeX, which is a meta language that typesets math symbols. It would take a lot of work to learn TeX just to get a degree symbol to print. They used mainframes. To get it, you'd have in your document: \usepackage{gensymb}

It just got left out. Too much work to look up. Too expensive to print out. Too much labor to use a typesetting language. People either just didn't use it, used an asterik in its place, or left a blank space and wrote it in using a pen after the print.

By the time everyone accepted workarounds, Macs and postscript (both expensive) laser printers came about, and people in that camp would print degree symbols. In fact, they spent a lot of time printing all sorts of fancy things that PCs couldn't.

It was probably another decade or more before the price came down enough that most people had the capability to print the degree symbol.
Windows and WYSWIG word processors on everyone's desks, and the CPU did image processing to postscript, but postscript was never popular in the PC world.
 
On non us keyboard layout is totally different.
I smash altgr and keys to find randomly what I need.
Or...windows-run- charmap.exe :)
 
I use ALT 0176 for degrees. It's currently 34.5°F outside.

Another one is ALT 0162 ¢ cents symbol I use all the time, on my Windows machine.
 
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