Type special characters {!@#$%^&*()} directly without pressing shift key in win 7 and 8

Question

I am using both windows 7 and windows 8 PC.

currently I am writing a paper in latex and tired of pressing shift key to type special characters like $%^#& . Is there a software so that I can type these characters directly without pressing shift key. I have a numpad so I can type numbers from there.

EDIT:

Thanks to Franck Dernoncourt for a wonderful answer. Here is the keyboard layout I am currently using

Anyone can get the setup files from here. After unzipping these files ,Run setup.exe . Then use win + space to change windows layout on win 8. For win 7 click here to know how to change keyboard layout

Answer 1

You could create a new Keyboard Layout (or edit an existing one) with Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator, which is free, provided by Microsoft, and works on Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, and Windows 7:

• Create new keyboard layouts from scratch
• Base a new layout on an existing one
• Modify an existing keyboard layout and build a new layout from it
• Multilingual input locales within edit control fields
• Build keyboard layout DLLs for x86, x64, and IA64 platforms
• Package the resulting keyboard layouts for subsequent delivery and installation

FYI: Some ideas in the post An Ideal Keyboard Layout for Programming:

• Swap numbers with symbols in the top row, because long or repeated literal numbers are typically replaced with named constants;
• Swap backquote with tilde, because backquotes are rare in many languages but destructors are common in C++;
• Swap minus with underscore, because underscores are common in identifiers;
• Swap curly braces with square brackets, because blocks are more common than subscripts; and
• Swap double quote with single quote, because strings are more common than character literals.

If anyone is aware of some nice keyboard layout repositories, please edit my answer or add as a comment.

Answer 2

You can use AutoHotKey to do this. It's a resident program, and I've been using to generate and insert GUIDs on a keypress for a while now.

You'll want to know about the key list, and you'll want to read some of the documentation.

To remap the numberpad 0 key to !, for instance, you'd put the following line in your AutoHotKey script file:

Numpad0::!

Similarly for the rest of the numeric keys. Note that AHK can distinguish between the numeric keys when numlock is on, and when numlock is off, so you can remap them differently in those two states if you like.

This tool is a resident program, but it also allows you to update the script on the fly without a reboot, so that's nice.

Answer 3

From your question and responses, it seems that you want to remap the number keys on top row to their special meanings. Franck Dernoncourt addressed that.

Another way, though admittedly strange, would be to tape down the Shift and Caps Lock keys. By taping down Shift, the numbers will use their special meaning. To address the side-effect of the letters becoming capitalized, taping down Caps Lock will return them to small caps. (Using both shifts on a letter does nothing more than one. Both with Caps Lock does not do anything on my system.) This will prevent capital letter entirely, but even that can be addressed with a regex replace afterward on period-space-letter.