On Thu, 2002-01-03 at 11:07, Robert Thyberg wrote:
In KMail under SuSE 7.3, I am using a standard 101-key keyboard set up with English (US) and US-ascii in the Kmail setup. Frequently I need to use diacritical marks (Swedish and German). In Win98 it is easy (ALT+---). I can change the Keyboard to Swedish or German using YAST and get the characters I want but that is not convienent.. Can anyone give me the proper keystrokes and/or procedure to do this?? Have checked Unicode and Evertype to no avail.
Regards, Bob
Bob, What you need to look into is the "dead keys" setting. In the KDE Control Center (if you are using KDE, I'm assuming that you are), go to Peripherals -> Keyboard and ensure that "Disable keyboard Layouts" is not checked. The scenario that I use is that "U.S. English" is my Primary Layout, but I also have "U.S. English w/ deadkeys" checked. You will now notice a new icon in your KPanel Tray that resembles an itty bitty little flag with US emblazoned on it. If you left click on this icon, you'll see a noticable change in the background flag. When it is a standard US "Stars and Stripes" flag, your keyboard will act as normal... but when it is on the other type of flag, you're keyboard will act a little differently. Here is the secret -- if you press the apostrophe "'" key once (with or without the shift key held down to get a double quote), you'll notice that nothing types. This is a "toggle" key - which toggles the accents on and off. Now just type a vowel - like an a, which becomes "á" and with the shift key held down, it becomes "ä". The standard e becomes "é" and with shift becomes "ë". So you are basically typing ' then a or " then a, depending on which accent you would like above the vowel. If you want an apostrophe or a double quote, just press the key twice. This works for all of the vowels, á, é, í, ó, ú and sometimes ý (ä, ë, ï, ö, ü and sometimes ÿ too! :-)) I like this system much better than the alt+numbers Window's system, because it's more logically thought out and much easier to remember, as pretty much everything in KDE is. So there you have it -- Steve's somewhat complex guide to fun and Diacritical Marks / Vowel Accents. Have a great day! -Steven