In Our Words / ArticleWriting Documents Using “Foreign Language” Character SetsPart 1: European Characters in Windows XPBy Justin Laby, Co-founder, Mouko, LLCI was sitting in Italian class a few weeks ago when one of my fellow students handed out a small sheet of paper. On the paper appeared a column of letters. Each letter had a “grave” accent above it, and next to each letter was written “ALT,” followed by a four-digit number. This student, Mary, had taken considerable time to help out her fellow students, which was very nice, but I had to think she was handing out the wrong instructions; the directions seemed innefficient. To insert a “ù,” for example, would require holding down the left ALT key and hitting the numbers, 0, 2, 4, and 9 in sequence — five keys to insert just one letter. Mary's table looked something like this:
Table 1: A Sub-optimal Method to Insert Accented Italian Letters in Windows After speaking with Mary and others in my class, I discovered that
everybody had been inserting these Italian letters into their homework in
different ways. Some were copying and pasting from old documents or text
found on the Internet, some were using the “ If you need to write in multiple languages, whether for class, work, or personal reasons, at some point you’ve probably struggled to find the a good way to insert accented symbols into your text. Maybe you needed a French cedilla (ç) or a German eszet (ß). Perhaps you’re writing an article about El Niño, or copying your favorite tiramisù or crème brûlée recipe. In any case, a simple and elegant method for typing these letters exists. Perhaps Table 1 seems manageable — after all, just ten key sequences won’t be too hard to remember once you’ve used them a few times — but what if you speak another Romance language? French alone uses acute accents, grave accents, circumflex accents, diereses, and cedillas. Spanish adds a tilde accent, as well as unique punctuation, such as ¡ and ¿. With such a huge table, simply writing, “j’ai mal à la tête,” can be a real headache and cost valuable time and energy. Most of the major operating systems have an easy method for inserting letters in multiple character sets, but figuring out how to configure your computer to use that method can be tricky. This article will focus on how to configure Windows XP to use international settings, but methods for other operating systems will appear in future articles. Step-by-step: Setting Up Your Foreign Language KeyboardStep 1: Launch the Regional and Language Settings Control PanelWindows XP allows you to set up your computer with multiple
keyboard layouts. For example, you can turn your US keyboard into an
Italian or Romanian one by changing just a few settings. Your keyboard
will behave just as if you were sitting on a native computer in an
Internet café in Venice or Bucharest. To achieve this, you must run your
 Figure 1: The Regional and Language Settings Control Panel Icon Step 2: Click the Details Button of the Language TabOnce your  Figure 2: Regional and Language Options Control Panel Step 3: Add Keyboard Layouts for Other Input LanguagesA new window called  Figure 3: Text Services and Input Languages Window When you click on the  Figure 4: Add Input Languages Window Choose whichever input languages you want to use and add them by
clicking Step 4: Activate the Language BarThe input languages you have chosen will now be available to you,
but first you must enable the “Language Bar.” The language bar is a tool
that either sits next to your task bar (in your start menu) or as a
separate window elsewhere on your screen. Whenever you want to switch
your input language, you can use the Language Bar to change it. To
activate the Language Bar, click the  Figure 5: The Language Bar… Button When you click on the  Figure 6: Language Bar Settings When the window closes, you should have a new object floating in front of all the other objects on your desktop. The floating object is the Language Bar, which should look like this:  Figure 7: The Language Bar As you can see, the Language Bar has four icons. From left to
right: Once you have the Language Bar where you want it, you can click on the keyboard icon and select alternative input languages. Note that it's necessary to do this for each application you use. It's possible to have 5 programs open, each with its own type of keyboard! The United States-International Keyboard LayoutBecause I mostly use European languages but strongly dislike
European keyboard layouts, my personal favorite layout is United States-International. This layout is
helpful for any Romance or Germanic language. The keyboard layout is
exactly the same as a normal United States QWERTY keyboard, with one
exception: by hitting logical two- or three-key combinations, you can
add accents to letters. To write a German ü, for example, just type a
double-quote character (") followed by the letter “u.” For an “acute”
accent, hit the single-quote character (') before the vowel over which
you wish it to appear. A French é, for example, would be ' + e. For
“grave” accents, just use the backward-quote (or backtick) character
(`), which shares space with the tilde, followed by the letter.
Additional punctuation can be accessed using the right-alt key and
hitting the respective key. To enable the United States-International
keyboard, simply follow the instructions in the previous section and
find
Table 2: Key Combinations to Use with US-International Keyboard Layout If you want to insert an actual letter (rather than an accented one) just hit the space bar after the symbol. For example, if you wanted to insert a caret (^) instead of an accented letter, just hit the ^ symbol followed by a space bar. |
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