Accented Characters and Special Symbols

Den Wilson valden@vectis52.freeserve.co.uk
Sat, 26 Apr 2003 10:44:42 PDT
Hello all,

I was trying to use Mark Wilcox's neat posting on the wiki but found it
didn't appear to work with Windows XP. However, after blundering around in
the dark (my fault, not Mark's) I stumbled across the following:

All the special characters and symbols can be readily accessed in
Windows XP by selecting Regional and Language Options in Control Panel.
Click on the Languages tab and the Details button and then add Spanish
(traditional) as the language and then United States-International as the
keyboard input from the drop-down selection boxes (the languages are all
pre-installed in XP). The new settings will appear beneath your default
language and keyboard settings (English/UK in my case) and an icon will
appear on the desktop allowing you to switch languages. The easy bit is that
if you now select Spanish (ES) from within an open document  the keyboard
will behave normally but you can now additionally use the 'AltGr' key to
access all the special symbols: AltGr+a = á, AltGr+n= ñ, AltGr+c = ©,
AltGr+? = ¿ etc. A hunt around the keyboard using the 'AltGr' key will turn
up just about everying including fractions and other numeric symbols
(AltGr+2=²).  The keyboard defaults back to your original settings when you
close the active document window. You can add as many different languages as
you wish.

If at this stage you find you have accidentally removed your original
default settings (don't we all?) just go back and re-select them.

Have fun!

Den Wilson
Isle of Wight
UK.
Zone 8 (maritime) almost frost-free.


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