dieljean@oregon.uoregon.edu (11/15/90)
Hi everybody, I have a very stupid question to ask... A friend of mine is taking French in Grad school, therefore using Ms Word she wants to access all those lovely accents and extra characters that the US keyboard doesn't show ! Being French myself I never thought I could be faced with such a questio Therefore the question is how do you get those extra ASCII characters through the US keyboard, is there a way like on other computers to configure the keyboard in French ? should she buy a French Keyboard ? This is a really basic question from a begginner so please don't blame me, I have a good knowledge of computers but it is neither Apple neither IBM because they are too expensive in France. (in fact I'm an Atari 1040stf user... which is also a MC68000 machine) Thanks for you reply at the following adress, Friendly, Jean-Philippe DIEL -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Diel Jean-Philippe MBA 1 University of Oregon, EUGENE USA Bitnet = DIELJEAN@OREGON Internet= DIELJEAN@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
vd09+@andrew.cmu.edu (Vincent M. Del Vecchio) (11/15/90)
> Excerpts from netnews.comp.sys.mac.apps: 15-Nov-90 Re: French accents > under MS.. Joseph Houghtaling@cs.al (2256) > To get an accent, type option-e followed by the letter to be accented. > To type a grave, type option-` followed by the letter > To type a circumflex, type option-i followed by the letter. > To type an umlaut, type option-u folloed by the letter > To type the symbol that goes over the 'n' in the spanish Senor (I forget > what it's called), type option-n and the letter. To type a c with a cedilla (I think that's what it's called), hold down option and type a c. Another "Apple mnemonic"...
michel@etl.go.jp (Michel Pasquier) (11/21/90)
In article <20263.2741568c@oregon.uoregon.edu> Jean Diel (dieljean@oregon.uoregon.edu) had asked: >> Therefore the question is how do you get those extra ASCII characters >>through the US keyboard, is there a way like on other computers to configure >>the keyboard in French ? should she buy a French Keyboard ? to which, in article <4043@network.ucsd.edu> Jon Matousek (jon@weber.ucsd.edu) did answer: >Try Nisus: [advertising stuff deleted :-] Oh, come on. Nisus is certainly a very nice application and I wish I had it sometimes when Word cannot do such or such thing... BUT Jean Diel asked for an answer using Word, not for an advice about buying a new software... Anyway, here we are. As far as I know there are two ways to produce the french special characters (or the german or spanish ones for that matter). When one uses a french system, the fonts provided have these special characters designed in the non-standard part of the ASCII table (ie codes > 128). Then the special keys on a french keyboard are mapped to these special characters - just press the key and "le tour est joue". However, not all fonts do have these additional characters (by far) so that this becomes pretty soon a limitation. [I think I noticed that the first time I changed a normal french sentence from, say, Times to Venice. All the special accentuated characters were then replaced by blank squares!!!] The other way has the advantage to work with any font and a US keyboard. But, as a drawback, characters input is a little less immediate. What happens is that the accents are available through particular option keys, and if followed by a voyel the two characters are superimposed, producing the correct special accentuated character. Namely: ' (accent aigu) is [option e], ` (accent grave) is [option `] (<backquote>) ^ (accent circonflexe) is [option i] and : (trema) is [option u] Thus e' (e accent aigu) is produced by typing: [<option> e] <e>, the a` (a accent grave) by typing [<option> <backquote>] <a>, and u^ (u accent circon- flexe) by [<option> <i>] <u> etc. This way, one can superimpose any accent on any voyel, producing even illegal characters. Note also that the "c," (c cedille) is directly available through [option c]. Since french contains a lot of these accentuated characters, typing can become really painfull. A solution is to use MacroMaker (or any such macro utility) and bind these sequences to something more convenient. I use myself the <control> key, unused anyway, with such bindings as <control e> for e', <control w> (the next one on the keyboard) for e` and <control r> for e^, <control a> for a` etc. Then, despite the usage of a US keyboard, only one keystroke is necessary to input french special characters in any application (even Nisus :-). Now I can input and mix easily english, french, german, spanish and japanese in the same text... I'll tell you, the Mac is really a *great* computer. -Michel. -- Michel Pasquier ........................ AIST/MITI Guest Researcher ElectroTechnical Laboratory . Intelligent Machine Behaviour Section Tsukuba, Ibaraki 205, Japan . Tel: 298-58-5964 . Fax: 298-55-1729 Email: michel@etl.go.jp . "I've no employer, so who do I speak for?
paul@u02.svl.cdc.com (Paul Kohlmiller) (11/22/90)
michel@etl.go.jp (Michel Pasquier) writes: >In article <20263.2741568c@oregon.uoregon.edu> Jean Diel (dieljean@oregon.uoregon.edu) had asked: >>> Therefore the question is how do you get those extra ASCII characters >>>through the US keyboard, is there a way like on other computers to configure >>>the keyboard in French ? should she buy a French Keyboard ? Has anyone suggested the INIT called PopChar. This gives a very easy way to get to those characters that are available but don't appear on your keyboard. This INIT is Shareware and available in lots of places. -- // Paul H. Kohlmiller // "Cybers, Macs and Mips" // // Control Data Corporation // Internet: paul@u02.svl.cdc.com // // All comments are strictly // America Online: Paul CDC // // my own. // Compuserve: 71170,2064 //
grahams@milton.u.washington.edu (Stephen Graham) (11/22/90)
In article <28808@shamash.cdc.com> paul@u02.svl.cdc.com (Paul Kohlmiller) writes: >michel@etl.go.jp (Michel Pasquier) writes: > >>In article <20263.2741568c@oregon.uoregon.edu> Jean Diel (dieljean@oregon.uoregon.edu) had asked: > >>>> Therefore the question is how do you get those extra ASCII characters >>>>through the US keyboard, is there a way like on other computers to configure >>>>the keyboard in French ? should she buy a French Keyboard ? > >Has anyone suggested the INIT called PopChar. This gives a very easy way to get >to those characters that are available but don't appear on your keyboard. This >INIT is Shareware and available in lots of places. > Sounds like this should become a FAQ (Frequently Asked Question). The simplest answer, as has been pointed out, is that the standard additional letters for most European languages are available as option-<key> as part of the standard Mac interface. The simplest way to find them is through KeyCaps (which is why this is provided). While doing an option-keystroke for letters may seem tedious for some people, I have found it easy to become accustomed to through frequent use. You should also know that both Nisus and Word have foreign-language spelling dictionaries available (though US$75 is a bit expensive for the Word ones). I dimly recall that similar dictionaries are available for MacWrite. Oh, yes, PageMaker also has optional foreign-language spelling&hyphenation dictionaries available, again at a relatively high price. Steve Graham graham@isis.ee.washington.edu