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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?"

13 of 126 comments (clear)

  1. easy as Pi by Tumbleweed · · Score: 4, Funny

    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*

  2. One of us is a dumbass, but it could be me... by darken9999 · · Score: 5, Informative
    I must not understand the question. This just seems too easy.

    Here is a sorta technical document about accented and special characters...

    Netscape

    Here is a pretty layout of what buttons to press...

    Harvard

  3. US Keyboard is the right layout. by norwoodites · · Score: 5, Informative

    é (aka option-e e).
    Ã (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.

  4. Keycaps and hints by MrAndrews · · Score: 5, Informative
    The easiest way to learn these things is to open Keycaps in the Utilities folder (in Applications). That's the old-fashioned way to do it. Once upon a time, it used to be under the Apple menu, so everyone found it and misused it.

    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.
    1. Re:Keycaps and hints by dhovis · · Score: 4, Informative

      This has been the way that Apple has always done accents, but as I was testing it out, I noticed a new feature (at least in Safari).

      When you type Option-`, for example, a little yellow block appears with an accent grave in it. The next letter you type will get the accent grave (as long as the accent can be added to that letter).

      The ones I'm aware of are

      Option-` grave
      Option-e agieu (sp?)
      Option-i carat (?)
      Option-u umlat
      Option-n tilde
      --

      --
      The internet is the greatest source of biased information in the history of mankind.

  5. 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!

    --
    Danke tres mucho, tovarishch.
  6. Accents under OS X by kurosawdust · · Score: 5, Funny
    How have people been typing accents under OS X?

    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".

  7. The layout for the US International by rbrito · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  8. Dude, it's *way* easy... by RevAaron · · Score: 5, Informative

    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:

    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. :P

    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 /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.

    It's a helluva lot better than ALT codes on WinDOS. :)

    --

    Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
  9. Unicode is fine by kalidasa · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  10. Two ways: by NaveNosnave · · Score: 5, Informative

    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:

    To make the Character Palette available, open International preferences and click Input Menu. Select Character Palette in the list.

    To open the palette, choose Show Character Palette from the input menu (the one with the Character Palette symbol or the flag).

    To enter a character, choose the items you want to see from the View pop-up menu. Select the category of characters in the left column and double-click the character or symbol you want to enter in the right column.
    Evan Evanson
  11. A couple options by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    You 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.

  12. Enable the Character Paletter Menu by Paul+Burney · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    --
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