Re: TECH: okay, I'm an idiot

dirk elzinga wrote:

> With that subject heading, let me just get to the problem. I
> want to use the characters with diacritics allowed by ISO-
> 8859-1 in composing e-mail, but I don't know how to make them
> print on the screen. I have my e-mail utility (Pine 4.05) set to
> ISO-8859-1, so I know the characters are there, and I can see
> them when y'all write them. I don't know how to do it myself
> though. Aargh!
This procedure assumes you have a PC running Windows.  If you don't,
it may help someone else.

You want to install the US-International keyboard.  Choose Settings->Control
Panel from the Start button and click on the keyboard icon.  You should see
the U.S English language installed.  Click Add and choose another
language.  (In Windows NT and maybe Win98, I don't know, you can choose
U.S. English a second time, but not in Win95.)  I recommend English (Canadian)
as the differences are minimal. Click OK.

Now click Properties to change the keyboard from Canadian Multilingual to
U.S. International.  Click OK.  You will be prompted for your Windows CD-ROM.
When complete, you can close the Control Panel.

There is now a small icon "EN" in the system tray (lower left corner by default).
Clicking on it will present a menu.  When you want to use the international
keyboard, choose "English (Canadian)" from this menu.  The U.S. international
keyboard is now in effect.  Switch back to "English (U.S.)" to restore the
normal keyboard.  Be sure to do this before doing anything locale-sensitive
such as spell checking.

In this keyboard, the double-quote, single-quote, grave, circumflex, and tilde
keys are "dead".  When you type one, nothing happens until you type a following
letter.  If an 8859-1 combination exists using diaeresis, acute, grave, circumflex,
or tilde respectively, that character will be generated.  Otherwise you get the
regular sequence of two ASCII characters.  To type a double-quote, etc. etc.
character by itself, follow it with a space.  The possible accented
letters are:

Acute accents:  Á  á  É  é  Í  í  Ó  ó  Ú  ú  Ý  ý
Grave accents:  À  �   È  è  Ì  ì  Ò  ò  Ù  ù
Circ accents:   Â  â  �   ê  Î  î  Ô  ô  Û  û
Dots accents:   Ä  ä  Ë  ë  Ï  ï  Ö  ö  Ü  ü  ÿ
Tilde accents:  Ã  ã  Ñ  ñ  Õ  õ

Note that there is no capital form of ÿ.

The behavior of the *right* ALT key also changes.  The left ALT key has the
usual ALT functions.  The right ALT key is now called "AltGr" and can be used
to generate other characters as follows:

        c       ©
        C       ¢
        d       ð
        D       Ð
        l       ø
        L       Ø
        m       µ
        r       ®
        s       ß
        S       §
        t       þ
        T       Þ
        w       å
        W       Å
        z       æ
        Z       Æ
        1       ¡
        !       ¹
        2       ²
        3       ³
        4       ¤
        $       £
        6       ¼
        7       ½
        8       ¾
        -       ¥
        =       ×
        +       ÷
        [       «
        ]       »
        \       ¬
        |       ¦
        ;       ¶
        :       °
        ,       ç  (can also be typed as 'c)
        <       Ç  (can also be typed as 'C)
        /       ¿

Standalone acute (´) and diaeresis (¨) are typed with AltGR-' and AltGR-"
respectively, followed by space.

Alternatively, you can run the "Character Map" application from Start->Programs->
Accessories.  You can then double-click on the letter you want and click
Copy to copy it to the clipboard.  Most applications will allow pasting
with the keyboard sequence Ctrl+V or the menu entry Edit/Paste.  Unless
you only need one specific letter, this gets old fast.

--

Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis um dies! || John Cowan <jcowan@...>
Schliesst euer Aug vor heiliger Schau,  || http://www.reutershealth.com
Denn er genoss vom Honig-Tau,           || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Und trank die Milch vom Paradies.            -- Coleridge (tr. Politzer)