[Davebug]

First of all, hello to everyone in the forum!

Someone has a laptop g4 with US Extended keyboard. Why is it that she can't type in accents correctly. In other words, instead of the accent going where it should be (as in on top of a letter) it comes before the letter when she types it in... She went on the system preferences and specified US Extended, plus American, and even tried other European keyboard settings but those accents still don't seem to work...

I really hope this is just something I'm overlooking because if it's a product problem, then that would be pretty shameful for Mac.

Any feedback... help please!

Thanks

[Chuckit]

Are you sure she's typing them in correctly? For instance, to get é, it should be option-E and then E. If she's typing shift-option-E and then E, it will come out as ´e. That sounds like what's happening.

[Davebug]

wow, thanks for the prompt response... yes that might be the case. Will check with the person in question and verify. I, myself am not familiar with that sort of keyboard so it might be that...

now, "option" is that where the apple key is?

[Chuckit]

I hope I'm thinking of the right keyboard. At any rate, option should be right by the apple key, yes.

[Davebug]

Originally Posted by Chuckit

Are you sure she's typing them in correctly? For instance, to get é, it should be option-E and then E. If she's typing shift-option-E and then E, it will come out as ´e. That sounds like what's happening.

ok, she has been doing that, but she needs accents on upper case letters too. How would she do that? And why does the extended keyboard have accents if you can't use them correctly? Are they there for some other function?

[Chuckit]

To get an accent on any letter, you type the accent's keystroke (again, option-E for ´) followed by the character you want the accent to go on. For for a capital E with an accent (É), it's option-E then a capital E.

As for why the keyboard has what: I honestly don't know. I don't have such a keyboard myself, so I can't really experiment to see.

Just to note, by the way, the US Extended layout in the input menu allows a lot more diacritic combinations than the US one does. For instance, Ẽ will show up as ˜E in the US layout.

[Cadaver]

Originally Posted by Davebug

wow, thanks for the prompt response... yes that might be the case. Will check with the person in question and verify. I, myself am not familiar with that sort of keyboard so it might be that...

now, "option" is that where the apple key is?

Um, its the key labeled "option."

[tom@bluesky.org]

Originally Posted by Davebug

And why does the extended keyboard have accents if you can't use them correctly?

For a list of the accents in US Extended, see this page:

http://homepage.mac.com/thgewecke/diacritics.html

Of course, individual users are free to type them as incorrectly as they want, but normally they all work just fine, with both lower and uppercase, except that old programs like Appleworks and Word X cannot do certain things.