FR/ENG add information to the sticky about accent marks

[Luke Drillhead]

On the French/English vocabulary board there's a sticky post about it being mandatory to use accent marks in French words, a policy that I support. The post goes on to give information about how to create accent marks. I wanted to add some additional useful info, but the thread is closed. I then thought I would PM the person who made the post, which is The WR Moderator Team. However, it doesn't let you PM him/her. I'll therefore post the information here. Perhaps a moderator could add this information to the sticky titled, "Adding accent marks (accent marks are mandatory in French)." I believe it will be useful to people as it has was of doing it without having to remember ASCII numbers.

Linux
I use a widget under Kubuntu Linux named "Character Selector." It installs via the Panel Tool Box. You just click on that and then choose “add widgets” and scroll through the available widgets until you find it. It's extremely useful. It puts an icon in the system tray that looks like a typewriter key with the "à" letter. You just click on it and it pops up a menu to choose whatever character you want. With it set to "European Alphabets" and "Latin 1 Supplement," you can find any character you need in French (and some other languages like German and Swedish). It has other alphabets too such as Asian and African ones. I just leave mine set to European/Latin 1 and always have access to the French characters that I need. You should be able to install Character Selector to any KDE-based distribution of Linux like Kubuntu. It can probably also be installed in other non-KDE distros (like Ubuntu), though I have not done that.

With LibreOffice -- Linux/Windows/Mac
If you have LibreOffice, you can use Writer to get any of the French accent marks you need. In Writer just choose Insert and then Special Character. When the menu comes up, choose Latin 1 from the drop-down menu. You will find all the French characters you need, as well as some others for other European languages.

 

[learnerr]

Under Kubuntu/Ubuntu, the easiest of all (I think) is to use the Compose key. For example, à is, in a sequence, Compose, ', A. Of course, this is easy only if you can think where you want to put the Compose key; I personally set it to Caps Lock. One can set the position of Compose on the keyboard via the System Settings window. As far as I understand (via a bit of googling), this feature is provided by X Window and therefore in principle can be used on almost any Linux.

 

[Nanon]

Hello Luke Drillhead and Learnerr,

Do clickable accented characters work for you under Kubuntu?

 

[Egmont]

On any current Mac, it's trivial: hold down a key and a pop-up menu of applicable accented versions of that character will appear after a short delay. You can select the one you want with your mouse/trackpad or by pressing the number key indicated in grey directly under each accented character.

(A cynic would suggest that Microsoft will "invent" this feature in Windows 2016, and that approximately 80 percent of all Windows users will believe that they did. Fortunately, I am not a cynic, or at least not that much of one.)

 

[Luke Drillhead]

Under Kubuntu/Ubuntu, the easiest of all (I think) is to use the Compose key. For example, à is, in a sequence, Compose, ', A. Of course, this is easy only if you can think where you want to put the Compose key; I personally set it to Caps Lock. One can set the position of Compose on the keyboard via the System Settings window. As far as I understand (via a bit of googling), this feature is provided by X Window and therefore in principle can be used on almost any Linux.

I can't seem to make that work on my PC. Maybe I'm doing it wrong.

Hello Luke Drillhead and Learnerr,

Do clickable accented characters work for you under Kubuntu?

Yes, they work! Thanks for the tip. I didn't realize this board had that feature. I usually do all my posts in LibreOffice Writer first and therefore haven't needed the advanced features to that this BBS offers. But, there it is.

On any current Mac, it's trivial: hold down a key and a pop-up menu of applicable accented versions of that character will appear after a short delay. You can select the one you want with your mouse/trackpad or by pressing the number key indicated in grey directly under each accented character.

(A cynic would suggest that Microsoft will "invent" this feature in Windows 2016, and that approximately 80 percent of all Windows users will believe that they did. Fortunately, I am not a cynic, or at least not that much of one.)

I could write an entire dissertation of my objections to Microsoft, but I won't bore you with it. Suffice it to say they're why I'm using Linux instead of Windows. I'm glad Mac has created an easy solution.

I created two special toolbars in LibreOffice Writer, one for French accented characters and another for German ones. I have to dash now, but I may come back with a screen shot.

 

[learnerr]

I can't seem to make that work on my PC. Maybe I'm doing it wrong.

You mean, you have set the option (via Input devices, on the Keyboard section, Advanced tab, Compose key position), but it does not work? Perhaps, the position of Compose that you have set conflicts with some other setting, some other key? Also note that the work of this feature depends on the current layout, it responds to entered symbols rather than to specific keys...

 

[jann]

Thanks, Luke, and thanks to the other participants here as well.

As you discovered, the WR Moderator Team account that gets used to post stickies and announcements is just that -- for posting stickies and announcements. It's not monitored, so the PMs are disabled. If you want to contact the moderator team of the French-English forum, there are instructions in this sticky. To summarize: the easiest and most efficient way is to click the red triangle and "report" a post.

We prefer to keep the information in our sticky as simple as possible, and have thus limited it to methods that are "native" to an operating system or that can be implemented directly in a web browser. We can't really maintain a long list of widgets, plug-ins and 3rd party software, but I'll be happy to check with my colleagues about an update. I don't see any reason why we couldn't link interested members here to the C&S forum for more information, etc.

Jann
FR-EN Moderator