On my old computer, sadly defunct, there was a program for doing accented letters. Unfortunately I have lost its name and am hoping some Doper knows what it is.
The way it worked was every character you wanted started by hitting—and releasing the right alternate key. If you then hit, say '+e you got an acute e. `+e got you a grave e, "+o got an umlauted o. IIRC correctly H+o got you the accent you need for Erdos. (Of course the + signs are not to be typed.)
It is not the stupid Microsoft program where rt.alt+e gives an acute e but there is no way to get the grave accent. If some Doper can remind me what the name was so I can install it on my replacement computer, I would be very grateful.
I only know the Mac stuff. There’s probably brilliant Windows stuff out there, I’m just ignorant of it because I only use Windows as a second language. For us Mac folks, Keyboard Preferences lets you put an icon in your menu bar and you can invoke a virtual keyboard at any time; our way of invoking special characters (∂ƒé∆¢flß etc) is to hold down the option key (shift key gives you an additional set when joined with the option key), and the virtual keyboard displays what you’d get if you did that keystroke. Or you can click on the virtual keyboard itself to input the symbol that you want.
Doesn’t have every symbol in existence. Some symbols have to be inserted with more arcane processes.
Oh, I didn’t know that. Cool! On my Mac, I just use the opt key as a compose button like the OP, without any virtual pop-up.
I think even international Windows can natively do something similar on foreign keyboards that have the AltGr key… it’s just the US English keyboard layout that typically lacks it. Newer versions of Windows have a software defined US English International layout, but it’s not as easy to use as a real keyboard with a proper layout and the properly labeled keycaps.
On my German QWERTZ keyboard, I can do the French accent aigu (é), accent grave (è) and accent circonflex (â), not via Alt-Gr, but there are separate keys for the accents, one with aigu and grave, and one with circonflex. You type an accented vowel by first hitting the accent key and then the vowel key, and only then is the accented vowel printed to the screen. I can’t do a c with a cedille though without an ALT code, and I don’t remember it.
ETA: this applies to a PC, I don’t exactly know if it’s the same on Mac keyboards. The last Apple computer I typed on was a IIe, and that was forty years ago.
That must be true, because those codes are international. And on a German layout, the degree sign is on the same key as the accent circonflex, the key just under ESC.
Because it’s open-source and been around a long time, there a zillion flavors of WinCompose for Windows 11 (and earlier) available for download. That’s why I posted to an article about WinCompose versus any one version. However, @DPRK in post #5 posted a link to what I believe is the ur-version of WinCompose hosted on GitHub. I’d expect it to perform exactly as you recall, plus be updated for whatever operating system you’re running.
Windows since long ago has had the built-in capability to easily do e.g. eéèë just by typing e 'e `e "e. I use that capability nearly every day somewhere.
I mean long ago like this was available in Win XP long ago. Not remotely something new. The feature is called alternate keyboards or keyboard layouts depending on where you look.
In Win10 or 11 it’s in Settings >> Time & Language >> Language & regions. On that page the top section is “Language” and the third entry there probably says “English (United States)” or maybe “English (Canada)”. Or maybe both if you switch hit. From whichever language(s) you want to adjust, click the … at far right and select "Language options from the pop-up.
That moves to the page specific to configuring “English (United States)” or “English (Canada)” as the case may be.
Down at the bottom is the keyboards section. Click [Add a keyboard] and choose “English (United States) - International”. You could also add a Canadian French or Canadian multilingual keyboard if that works better for your personal set up.
Once that’s done, you can switch between the keyboards installed by pressing Win+spacebar to scroll through the list of configured keyboards. The basic US QWERTY doesn’t do the combining characters but the US QWERTY - International does.
You will always see your active keyboard displayed at lower right of the task bar amongst all the other icons for network , Bluetooth, audio, date & time, etc.
I did not experiment in detail w the Canadian keyboards. Not knowing if your machine is set up fully Canadian, fully US, or a blend. If you do anything in French, you may find the “Canadian Multilingual Standard QWERTY” is the most natural choice for everyday use.
FWIW, even my current Win11 computer still has a character map. If you click on the start menu and start typing ‘character map’ you should find it. That’ll give you all the characters, their alt-code and the ability to copy them to your clipboard.
I installed it and it works exactly as I remembered it. But I was wrong about the Hungarian long accent, which does not seem to be supported so I will have to settle for Erdös.
Yes, I write code and I also need to write documents and emails in French and English, and for a long time I was constantly switching between U.S. English and French-Canadian. But now that I’ve adopted Canadian Multilingual Standard (on Windows and Linux), I no longer need to switch at all. There’s NO keyboard that has the keys labeled correctly for Canadian Multilingual on it, however; I use stick-on labels from Beaujoie.com .
Is Erdős the only word you’ll in which you’ll generally type the long accent?
If so, might be acceptable to just character-map in that one letter now and then. On the other hand, if you want that long accent at the ready all the time … don’t forget that there are many other flavors of WinCompose out there. I bet some of them have the long accent programmed in.
Erdős <— Typed with Canadian Multilingual keyboard. Press RightCtrl + Shift + the semicolon key to get the diacritic, then type o. Yeah, you need the stickers to know about that one.
