8775 Typing Italian accents

[quote=Lynn;82413]If you want to type Italian with all the accents go to [url=http://www.typeit.org]TypeIt.org - Type foreign characters easily[/url] Makes life a lot easier. Just type your post( or whatever you want in fact) then cut and paste.[/quote]

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Ciao tutti,

Here is what I have stuck to my monitor:[/FONT]

[FONT="Courier New"]PC Users
In Windows, accents can be created by holding down the ALT key while selecting a number combination. The numbers required for each accent can be found below:

À ALT+0192 à ALT+0224
È ALT+0200 è ALT+0232
É ALT+0201 é ALT+0233
Ì ALT+0204 ì ALT+0236
Ò ALT+0210 ò ALT+0242
Ó ALT+0211 ó ALT+0243
Ù ALT+0217 ù ALT+0249

Macintosh Users

Grave accent
(line goes backwards),
for example à Type Option+` , then then the vowel. For instance, to type à hold down Option+` then type lowercase A. To type À , hold down Option+` , then type capital A.
Acute accent
(line goes forwards),
for example é Type Option+E , then the vowel.[/FONT]

[FONT="Verdana"]The full set can be found here:

[url]http://www.tedmontgomery.com/tutorial/ALTchrc-a.html[/url][/FONT]

For Mac users the option is to have alternate keyboards and the Keyboard Viewer and character palette available in the top menu bar these are controlled via the International settings in the System Preferences.

As i wrote on another thread, you can also find these and other characters by opening up 'character map' on your PC.

Click on [B]Start> All Programs> Accessories> System Tools[/B] and then click on [B]Character Map[/B]

Yes, I know all that. Saw it all on Impariamo site where everybody kindly answered my question with strings of numbers and keys to press. Then a very kind person posted the typeit info and it is perfect. I use it for all the posts and emails I write in Italian. It has made my life and that of the other people I know who study Italian and French, a lot easier. You can write a whole letter then cut and paste it into Word for tweecking. Some keyboards are not that easily transformed for use in another language.

Am I the only one who finds switching to a different keyboard the best way to write in a different language?
Actually at the moment I just use the Spanish keyboard to write in any language (even if my computer is Italian) because it allows me to write in Spanish, French, German (the 3 words I know of it), Italian and English... It requires a tiny tiny effort to remember where the keys are but the differences are really minimal and it's soooo easy for me!
You can see the different keyboards on wikipedia...[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout]Keyboard layout - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/url]

Thanks for that. The Wikipedia article was very interesting for a geek like me. On carefully studying it though, my keyboard turns out to be "none of the above".

On mine, I have it set up to use "dead keys". This is where I hit an "accent" along with "Alt Gr" and nothing happens. But if the [I]next[/I] letter I type is one which accepts that accent, it's the accented form which appears. For example, if I type "Alt Gr" plus [B]`[/B], followed by [B]e[/B], I get [B]è[/B]. The advantage for me is that my keboard is absolutely standard US-English, which I need for software programming, until I use the "Alt Gr" key.

The "US-International" is similar, except that to get è, you'd type a plain ` followed by e. (If you just want a reverse quote on its own, you need to follow it with a space, which I find far too awkward to use.)

What you describe works exactly as my Spanish keyboard... no "accented vowels" like in the Italian ones, but "accents" that become visibel on the vowel that you hit afterwards. How do you "set" your computer to use "dead keys"? (Personally I have solved MY problem but I think it might be useful to other people reading).

[quote=Giulia da Urbino;83130]What you describe works exactly as my Spanish keyboard... no "accented vowels" like in the Italian ones, but "accents" that become visibel on the vowel that you hit afterwards. How do you "set" your computer to use "dead keys"? (Personally I have solved MY problem but I think it might be useful to other people reading).[/quote]
Um. Sorry, I'm a freak. My computer runs Linux. :wideeyed:

I think that on a Mac, [B]Option[/B] performs a similar fucntion to "Alt Gr" as I described. If not, there [I]will[/I] be a way to modify the keyboard behaviour. OS X runs a customised version of the same user interface as mine.

On a Windows computer, "[B]Alt Gr[/B]" should work somewhat within programs like Microsoft Word. I'm not sure about text boxes and so on in Internet Explorer. There's a free program called [I]allchars[/I] that will give you the same facility everywhere as I have in Linux:
[URL="http://sourceforge.net/project/platformdownload.php?group_id=188828"]SourceForge.net: allchars Project: Platform Download[/URL]

There's more background info on Wikipedia starting from here:
[URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compose_key"]Compose key - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/URL]

All sounds too complicated for me. I like to take the easy option every time. Don't understand computers and can't type Type it works for me. As long as you know how to cut and paste it is easier than any of the options discussed. My laptop cannot use the alt control + numbers option or many of the other routes described above. As I only type Italian on a few forums and for homework the Typeit site is quick and simple.