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Easy Character Accents in Mac OS X?

Posted by Cliff on from the simple-keystrokes-for-funny-characters dept.

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?"

4 of 126 comments (clear)

  1. A new topic for "Switch" commercials by PateraSilk · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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!

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  2. Re:Extended question.... by alangmead · · Score: 2, Insightful

    First, go to the international panel of System Preferences.app, select the Input Menu tab, and select US Extended checkbox. This will will add an input menu to the menu bar, and select "US Extended". Then go to /Applications/Utilities/Key Caps.app. Press the option key, The keycaps program will highlight all the dead keys. First tone seems to be option-a, second tone is option-b.

  3. Re:Dude, it's *way* easy... by Jeremy+Erwin · · Score: 3, Insightful

    for french
    option c =ç
    for German
    option s= ß
    option \ =
    for Latin
    option ' = æ
    option q = ?
    For Spanish
    option 1 =
    option ? =
    for corresponding with Europeans
    option 3 = £
    option @ =?
    for lawyers
    option 2 = ?
    option 6 =
    option 7 =
    option g = ©

  4. Re:US Keyboard is the right layout. by eLoco · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The accented characters used for demonstration above will only display correctly if your browser display encoding is set to UTF-8. For Latin-1 encodings they look like this:

    é -- e with acute accent (option+e e)
    è -- e with grave accent (option+` e)
    ê -- e with circumflex (option+i e)
    ñ -- n with tilde (option+n n)
    å -- a with ring above (option+a)
    ü -- u with umlaut/diaresis (option+u u)
    ç -- c with cedilla (option+c)

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