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Thread poster: Lisa Simpson, MCIL
Cannot insert character codes

Lisa Simpson, MCIL  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 07:36
Member (2010)
Portuguese to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Found Language Bar Jan 25

Okay, that's sorted. However, and I apologise for my stupidity here, how do the French type an acute, grave, trema etc?

I don't have enough of a need for an external keyboard. I don't type in any of my source languages but just have the occasional need when searching for terms on the internet, inputting terms in my Multiterm etc. For this, the extended keyboard would suffice and B D's tip on right ALT+e giving me é is exactly what I'm after, I just need to know how to do the same with the grave, trema and tilde. I've Googled extended keyboard layout but for some reason they don't seem to work with my keyboard.


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Lisa Simpson, MCIL  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 07:36
Member (2010)
Portuguese to English
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TOPIC STARTER
This looked SO promising Jan 25

A link that may be useful to others but hasn't worked for me: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2009/02/24/the-joy-of-accents/

After enabling the United Kingdom Extended keyboard I still had no joy. This is what happens:

1) Acute accents (”á”) by holding down Alt Gr and pressing the letter key (as before);
á - yes, that works.

2) Grave accents (”à”) by pressing the “back tick” key followed by the letter key;
gives me: `a

3) Umlaute / diaereses (”ä”) by pressing Alt Gr + 2, followed by the letter key;
gives me: a

4) Circumflexes (”â”) by pressing Alt Gr + 6, followed by the letter key;
gives me: a

5) Tildes (”ã”) by pressing Alt Gr + #, followed by the letter key.
gives me: a

6) And, as a special treat, you can also generate a “c” with a cedilla (”ç”) by holding down Alt Gr and pressing “c”.
gives me: [nothing]

Anyone else have more luck? What am I doing wrong?!?


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Gail Bond  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 07:36
Member (2009)
French to English
Accent Composer Jan 25

Hi Lisa,

I bought Accent Composer for just £15, http://www.accentcomposer.com. I couldn't cope with the embedded keyboard, and wouldn't want to change the language of my keyboard. This dinky little piece of software means that all you have to remember are 5 keystrokes, to create acute, grave, circumflex, cedilla and diaeresis (at least, that's all I need for French) and then you apply these to your letter. For example, to create an acute accent, it's alt+ ', then press e, and hey presto, é! No need to remember loads of different Alt codes, and fewer keystrokes.

Hope this helps,
Gail


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Tony M  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 08:36
Member
French to English
+ ...
Did you try... ? Jan 25


Lisa Simpson, MCIL wrote:
However, ... how do the French type an acute, grave, trema etc?


Well, of course, in France there's no problem, as our keyboards have (most) of the accents on!

Did you try that link I posted? That seemed to give the specific codes for all the common accents, as far as I could tell.


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Tony M  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 08:36
Member
French to English
+ ...
Accent utilities Jan 25


Gail Bond wrote:
I bought Accent Composer


Great, Gail!

I think there are also free utilities available out there, if one can only find them...


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Giles Watson  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 08:36
Member
Italian to English
Control Panel Jan 25


Lisa Simpson, MCIL wrote:

Okay, that's sorted. However, and I apologise for my stupidity here, how do the French type an acute, grave, trema etc?



Graves and acutes you type with the letter, which is a separate character on the keyboard. Circumflexes and diaereses (tremas) you type separately before typing the letter (This is also how you used to type accents and breathings on Greek typewriters):

http://french.about.com/od/writing/ss/typeaccents_4.htm




I've Googled extended keyboard layout but for some reason they don't seem to work with my keyboard.



Are you sure you have activated the extended UK keyboard (it's a separate box to tick in the UK English section of the keyboard control panel)?



[Edited at 2012-01-25 18:51 GMT]


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Lisa Simpson, MCIL  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 07:36
Member (2010)
Portuguese to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
What do you do for the ones that aren't there? Jan 25


Tony M wrote:

Well, of course, in France there's no problem, as our keyboards have (most) of the accents on!



So, if you want an i tréma for example how would you do that? The AZERTY entry in Wikipedia is telling me for example if I want a tilde to key Alt Gr + é followed by the letter requiring the tilde - doesn't work. I think I need a break and will then take a look at Gail's Accent Composer tip. I've spent all of the past 4 hours trying to crack this!


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Lisa Simpson, MCIL  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 07:36
Member (2010)
Portuguese to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
@ Giles Jan 25


Giles Watson wrote:

Are you sure you have activated the extended UK keyboard (it's a separate box to tick in the UK English section of the keyboard control panel)?



[Edited at 2012-01-25 18:51 GMT]


Yes, United Kingdom Extended is now the default keyboard on the list yet nothing on that site you kindly provided or any others which I've tried have worked thus far - see my grappling above with the blog on the PCPro site.


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Lisa Simpson, MCIL  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 07:36
Member (2010)
Portuguese to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
1/2 way there Jan 25


Gail Bond wrote:

Hi Lisa,

I bought Accent Composer for just £15, http://www.accentcomposer.com. I couldn't cope with the embedded keyboard, and wouldn't want to change the language of my keyboard. This dinky little piece of software means that all you have to remember are 5 keystrokes, to create acute, grave, circumflex, cedilla and diaeresis (at least, that's all I need for French) and then you apply these to your letter. For example, to create an acute accent, it's alt+ ', then press e, and hey presto, é! No need to remember loads of different Alt codes, and fewer keystrokes.

Hope this helps,
Gail


Thanks for your tip Gail. In desperation I've downloaded Accent Composer. I think I'm on a trial version and I thought I would try out some of the characters. It gives me a 'ñ', which is lovely and a 'ë', very nice too, but when I try for an 'e grave', this is what I get 恠e! Chinese I guess? This is clearly not my day...


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Giles Watson  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 08:36
Member
Italian to English
Other keyboard layouts? Jan 25

It sounds odd that you are having difficulty with the UK extended layout. You could always try French or US extended. If those fail to work, too, you might have to have a quiet word with your supplier

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Robert Tucker
United Kingdom
Local time: 07:36
German to English
+ ...
Free ones Jan 25

AllChars and Ax. There was a problem with AllChars and Internet Explorer 8; don't know if it's fixed.

French keyboard layout:

Code:
~ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 ° +
² & é “ ' ( - è _ ç à ) =
A Z E R T Y U I O P ¨ £
a z e r t y u i o p ^ $
Q S D F G H J K L M % µ
q s d f g h j k l m ù *
> W X C V B N ? . / §
< w x c v b n , ; : !



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Jabberwock  Identity Verified
Poland
Local time: 08:36
Member (2004)
English to Polish
Autohotkey Jan 25

Download Autohotkey and all your accent troubles will go away... I mean, after you set up your scripts...

With Autohotkey you can create both shortcuts (i.e. Alt+a produces e.g. à) and autotext (so you can type acirc, press e.g. tilde key and the string is replaced with â). With a bit of effort you can also create chorded shortcuts, i.e. Ctrl+' followed by a produces à and Ctrl+' followed by e produces è.

Then you can create more complex scripts (e.g. I use one in which pressing " creates alternately opening and closing quote mark in any program). And you can automate almost any task, but this is another story...

[Edited at 2012-01-25 20:02 GMT]


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Lisa Simpson, MCIL  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 07:36
Member (2010)
Portuguese to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
I have no trouble with those in Word Jan 25


Jabberwock wrote:

Download Autohotkey and all your accent troubles will go away... I mean, after you set up your scripts...

With Autohotkey you can create both shortcuts (i.e. Alt+a produces e.g. à) and autotext (so you can type acirc, press e.g. tilde key and the string is replaced with â). With a bit of effort you can also create chorded shortcuts, i.e. Ctrl+' followed by a produces à and Ctrl+' followed by e produces è.

Then you can create more complex scripts (e.g. I use one in which pressing " creates alternately opening and closing quote mark in any program). And you can automate almost any task, but this is another story...

[Edited at 2012-01-25 20:02 GMT]


Hi Jabberwock, I have no trouble with any of these characters in Word the problem is getting them to work in Multiterm or anything else. I've read somewhere that the ` accent is a 'dead key' [whatever that means] and that is the only one that I haven't cracked yet. I like Gail's solution but at the moment it only gives me a Chinese character on any letters requiring a 'grave' accent.


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Jabberwock  Identity Verified
Poland
Local time: 08:36
Member (2004)
English to Polish
Of course... Jan 25


Lisa Simpson, MCIL wrote:
Hi Jabberwock, I have no trouble with any of these characters in Word the problem is getting them to work in Multiterm or anything else. I've read somewhere that the ` accent is a 'dead key' [whatever that means] and that is the only one that I haven't cracked yet. I like Gail's solution but at the moment it only gives me a Chinese character on any letters requiring a 'grave' accent.


Autohotkey will work in Multiterm and in most other programs. And you can configure it any way you want...


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Lisa Simpson, MCIL  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 07:36
Member (2010)
Portuguese to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Thank you all Jan 26

Just to thank everyone for their kind patience with me yesterday in trying to figure this out. I've managed to find a suitable work-around with a combination of Alt keys and Gail's suggestion of Accent Composer, which I have on trial at the moment but I think is probably worth the £15 for its sheer simplicity. I also have a fabulous array of foreign keyboards to access when I fancy learning to touch-type in French, Portuguese and Spanish. So, thank you!

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