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Easy Character Accents in Mac OS X?
joesao writes "How have people been typing accents under OS X? I'm not talking funky key combinations, but simple, 'dead-key' stuff like: a + ` = à. In Windows this is accomplished easily by setting the input locale for keyboards as 'United States-International' but the similar function under System Preferences doesn't have any acceptable keyboards. Unicode isn't an option, either; only a few applications support that. Documentation on Apple's site is scant, and a Google search doesn't yield anything that really works. Anybody out there have a decent keyboard file for Mac OS X?"
Like the one-button mouse, you should be using the Apple one-key keyboard - it makes everything much easier. No more decisions to make. Ever.
:)
(It's a jolk, folks, honest!
I want a PPC970 machine. NOW! *sigh*
Here is a sorta technical document about accented and special characters...
Netscape
Here is a pretty layout of what buttons to press...
Harvard
é (aka option-e e).
à (aka option-` `).
î (aka option-i i).
use key caps (in utilities) for more information (hold down option).
Note this was the same as mac OS 7-9.
To do basic combinations, try things like option-e, option-i, option-u, and then hit whatever letter you want the accent to appear over. So option-e-e would give you é.
It seems like it might be tricky, but after a while it becomes second nature.
The world's only surviving livewriter.
Macs have been using the option-accent system for as long as I've used them. Compared to the alt-keypad system I've used for Windows it always seemed easy and transparent. I guess no one thinks to mention this to Windows folks when they switch!
Danke tres mucho, tovarishch.
I did a quick Google Search and found this site that seems to answer your question.
I haveta admit though, if this answers your question, I'll be a little surprised you could't find it within Google. This was the first search term I tried.
"Derp de derp."
This should take care of your needs.
Italian:
Just add "a" to the end of all words. (e.g. "This-a is-a how-a it-a looks-a!")
English:
Remove all 'h's.
Scottish:
Remove all coherence.
Australian:
Apparently, Australia is an advanced civilization where they have efficiently replaced every noun with the word "Foster's."
American:
Pepper your writing liberally with the word "like".
And it woks for me.
O José bateu com o pé e não se aleijou muito, mas como é chorão, chorou muito.
So stir-fry is really a Portuguese invention? Learn something every day!
The add-on layout for US International can be found at http://www.brockerhoff.net/usi/.
This piece of software is absolutely necessary for typing in Portuguese (especially here in Brazil, where a common US keyboard layout is quite common, and the population is used to the US layout with dead-keys -- dating from the time of typewriters).
Please, do let Apple know that you need this keyboard layout.
I sent them my feedback about this quite a while ago (I think that I can post here the mail if I find it), but more people letting them know would promptly make them aware of its importance.
Doing all sorts of accents on Mac OS Classic/X are super easy. Maybe you just didn't know where to look... but with the plain-old US layout, you do such:
:P
/Applications/Utilities. When it is open, hold down the option key, and it will show you all the characters which are typed when you do option-key. The keys with a white square highlighted are those which are combined with other letters to create accented letters.
:)
Opt-U + Letter = An umlauted letter
(Opt-u + A = Ä)
Opt-` + Letter = A backwards accent letter
(Opt-` + e = è)
Opt-i + Letter = A caret-top letter
(Opt-i + i = î)
Opt-e + Letter = Accented letter
(Opt-e + ó)
Opt-n + Letter = An n-yayed letter
(Opt-n + n = ñ)
That's all I know off the top of my head. The only won I use regularily is the umlaut key for German, excuse the lack of knowledge on the real words for some of the kinds of accents.
But this is about the damndest easiest way to do it, less using a kb layout for a language which uses these letters.
If you ever need to find out how to do these again, open up Keycaps, in
It's a helluva lot better than ALT codes on WinDOS.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Unicode works fine in any Cocoa app,
including TextEdit, Safari, iCal, Finder,
Address Book, Mail, the new Nisus beta,
etc. The apps that have problems are
all Carbon, because they don't invoke
ATSUI properly: MS Office v.X, AppleWorks,
Internet Exploder, etc. while BBEdit (which
should know better) is spotty for some
writing systems in some cases.
Even most of these apps can handle extended Latin, though. I'm guessing the poster didn't do his homework.
...the way Mac users have always done it! option + e and then e will produce an é option + u and then e will produce an ë option + n and then n will produce an ñ etc... etc... etc... If you're a switcher there are a few websites floating around with the intent to help switches or those new to Mac OS X. www.macfora.com www.macmentor.com www.macosx.com However, searching the built in Mac OS X help engine would have found what you were looking for by searching for 'accented characters'. Really don't know why people forget about help... It's there for a reason! But if you open the Key Caps utility and start pressing buttons (ie... try pushing shift, option, command and see what happens! also you can depress option and command at the same time!)
Adobe has a good cheat-sheet of key combinations for special characters on their Type Library page. The quick link is http://www.adobe.com/type/pdfs/characcessmac.pdf
1) Fire up Key Caps, in your Utilities folder. Select the font you're using in the Font menu, and it will display all the default characters of a virtual keyboard. Try hitting the Shift key - you'll see the Shift key depress on the virtual keyboard, and the lowercase letters will change to uppercase, and numbers will change to the symbols that are universally recognized as cuss words for comic strip characters. Now try hitting the far more interesting Option (alt) key. Gaze in awe upon the alternate characters you can produce by typing Option-[character]. Also, notice the Option-[character]s with a light box around them? They're all diacritical marks - accents, umlaut, circumflex, etc. - that can be added to other letters. So, for example, if you want to put an umlaut (you know, the "Deathtöunge" dots) above an "o", you need to type Option-u, then an "o".
2) Use the Character Palette. From Apple's godawful-slow Help System:
Evan EvansonYou can use "dead keys". For example, Option-u will type a"dead-key" umlaut which will combine with the next character typed.
You can use keycaps, as someone else mentioned.
Both of these only get you the stuff available from your current key layout.
For Cocoa apps, the TextExtras extension bundle (available at http://www.lorax.com/FreeStuff/TextExtras.html) has a built-in configurable character palette. One of the pre-defined panes in that panel has all the Unicode non-spacing marks. Clicking stuff in this panel will insert the clicked mark into the currently focused text area at the insertion point. In Unicode, non-spacing marks combine with the character before them.
Not only does this panel let you type non-spacing marks unavailable from the keyboard, it also lets you compose stuff that the dead-key input rejects as non-sense (such as the all-important n-umlaut needed for the correct spelling of "Spinal Tap". Even better, you can stack multiple non-spacing marks on a single character this way.
I hadn't noticed it before.. mebee it's new in recent builds, but if you do Opt-e.. you see the accent, with the background of the character space in orange, showing you that it's waiting for the character to go with it.. A good way to familiarise yourself with the keystrokes to get the accents you want (Opt-c for cidilla, Opt-e for acute accent, Opt-` for grave accent, Opt-u for umlaut etc etc.. have a play!
I find the Windows US-international keyboard layout is great, until I actually want to type a ' or " character--then my typing gets completely screwed up.
Once you get the hang of the Mac key combos (option-e, e for é etc.) I think you'll find it much more intuitive than the Windows way.
While we're on the topic, does anyone have any experience using non-Latin alphabets on the Mac under OS X? I'm particularly interested in Arabic, since I'll be taking an Arabic composition class in the fall and it would be cool to type my papers, since my handwriting sucks.
Head down, go to sleep to the rhythm of the war drums...
You can activate a menuling called the 'Character Palette' that allows you to see all kinds of characters for all different kinds of fonts. Its very similar to the old PopChar control panel in MacOS 9.
Go to the 'International' preference pane.
Choose the Input Menu Tab.
At the top of the list choose the check box for the Character Palette.
This has got to be one of the dumbest ask slashdot ever.
1. You can use option characters (option-e for accent, etc). You can open the Key Caps application and visually see what will happen with each keystroke.
But since you mention you don't want "funky key combinations" I offer:
2. Change the keyboard layout. Go to System Preferences > Keyboard.
If for example you put the keyboard in spanish, the ; key becomes the ñ (n with a tilde) key, and the accent character is one of the keys you can use. Again, open the Key Caps application if your keyboard isn't in spanish already.
Once you have enabled additional keyboards (for example spanish, azerty, dvorak, etc.) a menu item will appear with a flag representing the keyboard layout. That way you can switch layouts without having to open System Preferences.
Did you look at the "International" section of the System Prefs?
(I'm not sure if you need various langauges installed or not to do this.)
The Input Method tab lists all the installed keyboard layouts. If you select more than one of these layouts, you'll see a little flag in the menu bar. This menu allows you to select your current keyboard layout. if using the mouse isn't your syle, command-space bar will rotate layouts.
and there are other posts explaining how to use the option key to hit those international characters from your standard american layout.
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
I have found é and à accents. What I would like to know is how to do other accents - in particluar, for use writing pinyin. In Mandarin é would be the third tone, à would be the fourth tone. I'd like to know how to write the first and second tones for a letter.
(First tone is a bar on top of the letter, second is a little u on top of the letter - to indicate a falling then rising tone).
Thanks!
As an old timer, I use the option+ keyboard shortcuts mentioned by others. However, OS X includes a nice, easily accessible Character Palette for those who don't want to type key combos.
Go to the International Preference Pane, click on input menu at the right side and check on the character palette item. Now you'll see a little menu next to the last option in the menu bar. Click it to get a bunch of key entry options. The one for accents is "accented latin."
If you really like typing accented characters, try a software called PopChar Pro. I used to use it in OS 9 and I know there is an OS X version.
<?php while ($self != "asleep") { $sheep_count++; } ?>
"The Mac is not a Typewriter" by Robin Williams.
This book is cicra 1990 but the basics of accenting and typing special characters on the Mac hasn't changed.
I live and work in Spain and need to use Spanish characters everyday. I bought my laptop in Britain, so the keymap is British. I just switch between keymaps with option-apple-spacebar and don't pay any attention to what the keys read when type. It works fine. Same if I have to use a US keyboard, or any keymap. In short just learn a keymap that gives the characters you need and use it!
aAåÅáÁâÂäÄãà bB cCçÇ dD eEéÉêÊëË fFf gG© hH iIíÍîÎïÏ jJ kK lL mM nNñÑ oOøØóÓôÔöÖõÕ pP qQoeOE rR® sSß tT uUúÚûÛüÜ vV wW xX yY¥ zZ æÆ £
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They Are Vermin Feeding On Each Other's Feces.
I Hate \.
You can find it in International System Preferences:Input Menu Tab.
Well, what about the and ð and the various macron characters for Old English? I know I can install the Icelandic keyboard to get the thorn and eth, but what about the others?
...
Maybe I can make an Old English keyboard
While I don't have osX, I do have Unix boxes.
... and can be recompiled for osX, linux etc?
Perhaps there is a tool that can intercept keycombos etc, etc to Unicode
A blog I run for the wealth
As has been said, simply use the option key (with a step-like icon, also mis-labelled "alt" on some keyboards). Then explore the keyboard.
Ah, if your name were Håkan, you'd know what option-a does. And see, if your French girlfriend's name were Fran(option-c)oise... Oooh, here comes Bj(option-o)rn.
"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." -- Tennyson
The above comments about option- works. Also, if you would like to change the keyboard layout, you can do that by going to System Preferences->International and select the Input Menu tab. Here you can select from US, US Extended, Unicode Hex Input, Dvorak, Dvorak - QWERTY command and all kinds of other international keyboard layouts. This is under 10.2.6, I think pre 10.2 the tab menu is called Keyboard.
After selecting the ones you want, a little flag should show up on the menubar which allows easy switching from one input mode to another.
OS X's help system is wonderfully slow.
As I type this in Safari, I can't help but wonder: how did they achieved such molassenesse?
Yes, I know it's offtopic...
Option-o BØRK!
I'm sure you'll wonder how you lived without that one.
While all the Mac font gurus are together in one place, i wonder if anyone can explain this?
In my terminal, typing l/ (lowercase l and a forward slash) produces a single character which looks like the l but with a small diagonal line running through it. It only does this in certain fonts, including monaco (which is the default font and imo the best looking 'terminal' type font).
It's not just typing l/, it's any time when l/ is displayed. So directory listings are usually really messy.
Helpfully, it does not happen in any other application.
apple has the best language support if you ask me, so this shouldnt be a problem at all. you can always use keycaps.
I want 2D games back.
Launch System Preferences go to International and select Input Menu. Select whatever keyboard layout you want (I use Spanish and English). Whenever you need to use that keyboard layout hit option-cmd-space to go to the next keyboard layout. It's a little cumbersome but when you get used to it its very quick.
It's all quite simple. Check out key caps and make sure you're using a font that has extended character sets. option+e then typing and "e" will result in é. you can extrapolate from there!
Pooty tweet
option-e for á etc
option-i for â etc
option-u for ä etc
option-n for ã etc
option-` for à etc
option-c for ©
Why did it take 3 years to make the macs accent key shortcuts to a notice?
Can someone tell me if the windows accent keys have any logic? I hate those alt-132, alt-256 etc combo strakes..
...no stars but some stripes.
use the option key (with a step-like icon, also mis-labelled "alt" on some keyboards)
As we're so intensly discussing the option/alt key, here's a little-known fact: the icon for that key does not symbolize a "step", but a train-track-switch.
So it's the spot where a train has the "option" (choice), to take an "alt"ernative route: to go left or right. This symbolizes what use of the option key nearly always comes down to: do the same thing in a slightly different way.
Once you know it, it's very logical, but it's one of those rare cases where Apple's visual design hasn't succeeded in being obvious to users in general.
The option key has many very powerfull other uses, for instance:
- option-command-W closes *all* windows
- option-command-M minimizes *all* windows
- option-double-click on a folder opens the folder but also closes the parent folder
"These are my principles. If you don't like them, I have others." --Groucho Marx
I had mine set to swedish for years, because i got all my 'dead' keys. Now i have bought a swedish keybord and it's so much easier than an international one. good luck finding all your key combo's
Why the hell don't you use a portuguese keyboard? In Portugal EVERY desktop Mac comes with a portuguese keyboard. I just can't understand why a Brasilian living in Brasil will use an US keyboard. Even if you live in the USA, you can buy a portuguese keyboard (I don't know if there is a specific brasilian version). To me, you're holding the stick the wrong side.
I really wonder if the person who moderates the apple section on slashdot has ever used a mac.
This l33t hax0r mac trick has been a basic part of Mac OS FOREVER, i remember being told in school how using [option]+XXX on a mac was so much easier than resorting to an ascii table, which you'd have to do on a PC at the time.
And it's not that Mac OS doesn't come with a keycaps application either.
On a US keyboard layout, the keys are as follows:
This is pretty US-centric, because each character used is the letter which people in the US usually see most commonly with that accent (none of these are common in US English, but they are common enough in loanwords and in snippets of other languages seen sometimes). The exception to this is the acute accent, which is seldom seen in the US at all, so it was given the ` key, which looks like an acute accent anyway.
Incidentally, this is not a new feature on Mac OS X. It has worked this way since at least the System 6 days, and probably even earlier than that. Although some of the bad Carbon ports out there don't provide the same visual feedback that Cocoa and ATSUI do, the key combinations will still work. They even work in the Terminal.
...You insensitive clods!
Anyone else notice this? Mine's a UK keyboard layout, but the lack of this key makes my life mildly difficult, especially when coding perl/xml.
"I hate Cthulhu, Cthulhu hates me, I kill his cultists, He eats worlds for tea"
Option pound - as the americans call it pound and not hash.
Matt Thompson - Actuality - Insert product here.
Alt-3 or Option-3
It's got a good subset of the Mac option-combinations (plus the windows alt-codes should one ever be in such a situation): http://www.lrb.co.uk/store/mmat.php
Apple makes keyboards with accented characters, they may only be available in their respective markets. I live in Canada, and the Canadian Apple store has 2 keyboard options: US English and French Canadian
Maybe I'm just a masochist, but I find typing with non-US keyboard layouts perfectly usable. My alternate language is Hungarian, which uses a lot of accented characters, many of which are not used in many other languages. Simply enabling the kayboard layout under the "Input Menu" tab of the "International" system preferences makes it easy to access, and after a short while it's easy to get used to the meanings of various keys.
People, re-read the question before responding!
/. Moderators: Responses that include the phrase "dumb ass" often indicate that the reader did not understand the question, rather than his or her haxor guru wisdom. Take a look at all of the "duh, use the option key" posts that you declared "Informative." They're not. They completely miss the point of the original question and you fell for it.
The question is: How does one use a true deadkey such as apostrophe, AND ONLY APOSTROPHE for accented characters in Mac OS X?
Think back to touch typing class: you learned SHIFT and only SHIFT to modify characters. OPTION is a computer convention great for keyboard short cuts but is maddening for touch typists who hope to type as quickly in their native language as one can in English.
The only valid answers have been those regarding non-English keyboard maps that introduce non-OPTION deadkeys. So far, the question is not answered.
OT:
There is also an application called TypeIt4Me that lets you define all the character macros you want. Basically it works with OS X by copying your default keyboard file and then adding to it as you add macros. See http://www.typeit4me.com for more information.