🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <20263.2741568c@oregon.uoregon.edu> Jean Diel (dieljean@oregon.uoregon.edu) had asked:

>>	Therefore the question is how do you get those extra ASCII characters
>>through the US keyboard, is there a way like on other computers to configure
>>the keyboard in French ? should she buy a French Keyboard ?

to which, in article <4043@network.ucsd.edu> Jon Matousek (jon@weber.ucsd.edu)
did answer:

>Try Nisus: [advertising stuff deleted :-]

 Oh, come on. Nisus is certainly a very nice application and I wish I had it
sometimes when Word cannot do such or such thing... BUT Jean Diel asked for
an answer using Word, not for an advice about buying a new software...

 Anyway, here we are. As far as I know there are two ways to produce the
french special characters (or the german or spanish ones for that matter).

 When one uses a french system, the fonts provided have these special
characters designed in the non-standard part of the ASCII table (ie codes
> 128). Then the special keys on a french keyboard are mapped to these special
characters - just press the key and "le tour est joue". However, not all fonts
do have these additional characters (by far) so that this becomes pretty soon
a limitation. [I think I noticed that the first time I changed a normal french
sentence from, say, Times to Venice. All the special accentuated characters
were then replaced by blank squares!!!]

 The other way has the advantage to work with any font and a US keyboard. But,
as a drawback, characters input is a little less immediate. What happens is
that the accents are available through particular option keys, and if followed
by a voyel the two characters are superimposed, producing the correct special
accentuated character. Namely:
' (accent aigu) is [option e], ` (accent grave) is [option `] (<backquote>)
^ (accent circonflexe) is [option i] and : (trema) is [option u]

Thus e' (e accent aigu) is produced by typing: [<option> e] <e>, the a` (a
accent grave) by typing [<option> <backquote>] <a>, and u^ (u accent circon-
flexe) by [<option> <i>] <u> etc. 
This way, one can superimpose any accent on any voyel, producing even illegal
characters. Note also that the "c," (c cedille) is directly available through
[option c].

Since french contains a lot of these accentuated characters, typing can become
really painfull. A solution is to use MacroMaker (or any such macro utility)
and bind these sequences to something more convenient.
I use myself the <control> key, unused anyway, with such bindings as 
<control e> for e', <control w> (the next one on the keyboard) for e` and
<control r> for e^, <control a> for a` etc. 
Then, despite the usage of a US keyboard, only one keystroke is necessary to
input french special characters in any application (even Nisus :-).

Now I can input and mix easily english, french, german, spanish and japanese 
in the same text... I'll tell you, the Mac is really a *great* computer.

 -Michel.
-- 
  Michel Pasquier ........................ AIST/MITI Guest Researcher
  ElectroTechnical Laboratory . Intelligent Machine Behaviour Section
  Tsukuba, Ibaraki 205, Japan .  Tel: 298-58-5964 .  Fax: 298-55-1729
  Email: michel@etl.go.jp . "I've no employer, so who do I speak for?