# Nteract and Unicode characters

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/nteract-and-unicode-characters/7284>\
**Category:** Tooling\
**Created:** [November 24, 2017, 11:27am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/nteract-and-unicode-characters/7284 "2017-11-24T11:27:20Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![v-i-s-h](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/v-i-s-h/32/46152_2.png) [@v-i-s-h](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/v-i-s-h)\
**Post date:** [November 24, 2017, 11:27am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/nteract-and-unicode-characters/7284/1 "2017-11-24T11:27:20Z")

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Hi, I recently found [https://nteract.io/](https://nteract.io/) and is playing with it now. I liked the idea.  
But I’m not able to insert unicode characters like \epsilon, \mu etc into it.  
Is this not supported or am I missing something?

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**Author:** ![stevengj](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/stevengj/32/71_2.png) [@stevengj](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/stevengj)\
**Post date:** [November 24, 2017, 1:01pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/nteract-and-unicode-characters/7284/2 "2017-11-24T13:01:59Z")

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Apparently, tab doesn’t trigger completion in nteract (it only for indenting). To do the equivalent of tab completion, you type ctrl-space (see e.g. [https://github.com/nteract/nteract/issues/1322](https://github.com/nteract/nteract/issues/1322)).

(Since nteract then sends completion requests to the kernel, in this case IJulia, latex completions like `\epsilon` should then work identically to the REPL.)

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**Author:** ![v-i-s-h](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/v-i-s-h/32/46152_2.png) [@v-i-s-h](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/v-i-s-h)\
**Post date:** [November 24, 2017, 1:24pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/nteract-and-unicode-characters/7284/3 "2017-11-24T13:24:08Z")

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Yeah… Thanks Ctrl+Space is some what working  
I have to do ‘\epsi’ \> Ctrl+Space \>‘\epsilon’ \> Ctrl+Space \> ‘ϵ’. Its a little bit annoying to use ‘Ctrl+Space’ twice!! 😕

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**Author:** ![juliohm](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/juliohm/32/215266_2.png) [@juliohm](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/juliohm)\
**Post date:** [November 26, 2017, 2:24am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/nteract-and-unicode-characters/7284/4 "2017-11-26T02:24:52Z")

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@v-i-s-h what ire the advantages compared for Jupyter?

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**Author:** ![v-i-s-h](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/v-i-s-h/32/46152_2.png) [@v-i-s-h](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/v-i-s-h)\
**Post date:** [November 26, 2017, 4:31am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/nteract-and-unicode-characters/7284/5 "2017-11-26T04:31:58Z")

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They are aiming to unhook Jupyter from browser and make it available as a desk top app. But it’s still in alpha and so many things are misssing. So if you are coming from Jupyter, you may miss some good things at this point of time.  
One of the main things I liked is now I can just click on my ‘ipynb’ notebooks and nteract will automatically open. This is so easy than starting a notebook server and then browsing to the desired location.  
Overall I feel it is a promising project, but don’t use the current version for serious work. You may get lost in its bugs.

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**Author:** ![juliohm](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/juliohm/32/215266_2.png) [@juliohm](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/juliohm)\
**Post date:** [November 26, 2017, 4:40am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/nteract-and-unicode-characters/7284/6 "2017-11-26T04:40:07Z")

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I don’t think Desktop apps have a great future? 🤔

If you are interested in an improvement over Jupyter, try JupyterLab:

> **[Shows](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/shows/)**