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OS X Businesses Operating Systems Apple

Easy Character Accents in Mac OS X? 126

Posted by Cliff from the simple-keystrokes-for-funny-characters dept.
joesao writes "How have people been typing accents under OS X? I'm not talking funky key combinations, but simple, 'dead-key' stuff like: a + ` = à. In Windows this is accomplished easily by setting the input locale for keyboards as 'United States-International' but the similar function under System Preferences doesn't have any acceptable keyboards. Unicode isn't an option, either; only a few applications support that. Documentation on Apple's site is scant, and a Google search doesn't yield anything that really works. Anybody out there have a decent keyboard file for Mac OS X?"
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Easy Character Accents in Mac OS X? More

Easy Character Accents in Mac OS X?

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  • easy as Pi (Score:4, Funny)

    by Tumbleweed ( 3706 ) on Friday May 09, 2003 @06:26PM (#5922645)
    Like the one-button mouse, you should be using the Apple one-key keyboard - it makes everything much easier. No more decisions to make. Ever.

    (It's a jolk, folks, honest! :)

    I want a PPC970 machine. NOW! *sigh*

  • One of us is a dumbass, but it could be me... (Score:5, Informative)

    by darken9999 ( 460645 ) * on Friday May 09, 2003 @06:27PM (#5922649)
    I must not understand the question. This just seems too easy.

    Here is a sorta technical document about accented and special characters...

    Netscape [netscape.com]

    Here is a pretty layout of what buttons to press...

    Harvard [harvard.edu]

  • US Keyboard is the right layout. (Score:5, Informative)

    by norwoodites ( 226775 ) <pinskia@ g m a il.com> on Friday May 09, 2003 @06:30PM (#5922655) Journal
    é (aka option-e e).
    Ã (aka option-` `).
    î (aka option-i i).
    use key caps (in utilities) for more information (hold down option).

    Note this was the same as mac OS 7-9.
    • The accented characters used for demonstration above will only display correctly if your browser display encoding is set to UTF-8. For Latin-1 encodings they look like this:

      é -- e with acute accent (option+e e)
      è -- e with grave accent (option+` e)
      ê -- e with circumflex (option+i e)
      ñ -- n with tilde (option+n n)
      å -- a with ring above (option+a)
      ü -- u with umlaut/diaresis (option+u u)
      ç -- c with cedilla (option+c)
      • If you do not have it set to UTF-8, then there is a problem with your browser since it is the standard for i8n (sp?).
        • Whether the browser is set to UTF-8 is a human decision, not the browser's, so this is not a fault of the browser, although I would definitely agree that this should be the default now for i18n purposes. Unfortunately, all of the browsers I have worked with default to the most common encoding for the language of the target os, Latin-1 encodings for Western European languages, Shift-JIS for Japanese, etc.

  • Keycaps and hints (Score:5, Informative)

    by MrAndrews ( 456547 ) <mcmNO@SPAM1889.ca> on Friday May 09, 2003 @06:35PM (#5922681) Homepage
    The easiest way to learn these things is to open Keycaps in the Utilities folder (in Applications). That's the old-fashioned way to do it. Once upon a time, it used to be under the Apple menu, so everyone found it and misused it.

    To do basic combinations, try things like option-e, option-i, option-u, and then hit whatever letter you want the accent to appear over. So option-e-e would give you é.

    It seems like it might be tricky, but after a while it becomes second nature.

    • Re:Keycaps and hints (Score:5, Informative)

      by dhovis ( 303725 ) * on Friday May 09, 2003 @07:23PM (#5922930)

      This has been the way that Apple has always done accents, but as I was testing it out, I noticed a new feature (at least in Safari).

      When you type Option-`, for example, a little yellow block appears with an accent grave in it. The next letter you type will get the accent grave (as long as the accent can be added to that letter).

      The ones I'm aware of are

      Option-` grave
      Option-e agieu (sp?)
      Option-i carat (?)
      Option-u umlat
      Option-n tilde
  • Macs have been using the option-accent system for as long as I've used them. Compared to the alt-keypad system I've used for Windows it always seemed easy and transparent. I guess no one thinks to mention this to Windows folks when they switch!
    • Switch to the US International layout in Windows - you will find it to be far superior than the Alt+Number method.

      This has nothing to do with "switching" and everything to do with most users in the US not needing to type accents very often. Those who do can turn on the proper layout.

      • Re:A new topic for "Switch" commercials (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        In Europe, where people NEED accents and have different keyboard in each country, it's still a pain in the ass to type É È À Ç Ê OE Æ oe æ with MS Windows.

        MS Word under MS Windows have its own way to manage it, but it's a different way from all the others apps.

        I don't know why MS keep that in that way...

        ( BTW: http://www.xvsxp.com )
      • I find the Windows system actually annoying. Either you get easy accents and annoying stand-alone quotes, or you get easy stand-alone quotes and no accents. Both doesn't seem to be possible (I don't consider "+space easy).
        • Try the spiffy (free!) utility All Chars for Windows which is modeled on DEC's ``Compose'' key for their proprietary word processors---DEC later made a free utility called ``Compose.exe'' which did this for Windows ?? up to 95 beta something or other, then MS broke it so even though it's on the first Windows 95 Secrets CD-ROM, it doesn't work w/ Win95.

          All Chars is available at:
          http://allchars.zwolnet.com/userman122.html

          Highly recommended, even though it lacks some of the features of Compose.exe (appare
      • Have you ever tried to type C code when using the International Keyboard? It's maddening.

  • This site useful? (Score:3, Informative)

    by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Friday May 09, 2003 @06:38PM (#5922697) Homepage Journal
    I did a quick Google Search and found this site [216.239.33.104] that seems to answer your question.

    I haveta admit though, if this answers your question, I'll be a little surprised you could't find it within Google. This was the first search term I tried.

  • Accents under OS X (Score:5, Funny)

    by kurosawdust ( 654754 ) on Friday May 09, 2003 @06:47PM (#5922750)
    How have people been typing accents under OS X?

    This should take care of your needs.

    Italian:
    Just add "a" to the end of all words. (e.g. "This-a is-a how-a it-a looks-a!")

    English:
    Remove all 'h's.

    Scottish:
    Remove all coherence.

    Australian:
    Apparently, Australia is an advanced civilization where they have efficiently replaced every noun with the word "Foster's."

    American:
    Pepper your writing liberally with the word "like".

  • Portuguese keyboard (Score:2, Interesting)

    by JBv ( 25001 )
    And it woks for me.

    O José bateu com o pé e não se aleijou muito, mas como é chorão, chorou muito.

  • The add-on layout for US International can be found at http://www.brockerhoff.net/usi/ [brockerhoff.net].

    This piece of software is absolutely necessary for typing in Portuguese (especially here in Brazil, where a common US keyboard layout is quite common, and the population is used to the US layout with dead-keys -- dating from the time of typewriters).

    Please, do let Apple know that you need this keyboard layout.

    I sent them my feedback about this quite a while ago (I think that I can post here the mail if I find it), but more people letting them know would promptly make them aware of its importance.

    • This is the only person who "gets it". I guess it makes sense; we're both from Brazil, where we NEED accents to make ourselves understood. A word without an accent may have a completely different meaning.

      Sorry, I should have said that I already knew about the "option+letter" combinations. That's what I meant by "funky" key combinations, in my original post.

      This US International keyboard at brockerhoff.net is THE REAL DEAL. It is truly absurd that Apple doesn't incorporate it into OS X.

      No, anything else *
      • It was designed to mimic the Windows keyboard layout. For a Mac user, it's not the "real deal". I'm not sure how one survives on the web with a dead '~'.

        • A dead "~" becomes a ~ simply by pressing the space bar after typing ~.
          • That's what I thought. To me, that behaviour is rather annoying-- but then, I write more C than (say) German. The Brazilian Portuguese keyboard layout, btw, does not have seperate accent keys, although the Portuguese layout does.

            OSX also supports "US Extended" but that layout doesn't change the dead key locations. It does, however, support more diacretical marks and a number of Eastern and Northern European letters (e.g. the polish slashed L, eth, thorn, etc)

  • Dude, it's *way* easy... (Score:5, Informative)

    by RevAaron ( 125240 ) <revaaron AT hotmail DOT com> on Friday May 09, 2003 @07:29PM (#5922959) Homepage
    Doing all sorts of accents on Mac OS Classic/X are super easy. Maybe you just didn't know where to look... but with the plain-old US layout, you do such:

    Opt-U + Letter = An umlauted letter
    (Opt-u + A = Ä)
    Opt-` + Letter = A backwards accent letter
    (Opt-` + e = è)
    Opt-i + Letter = A caret-top letter
    (Opt-i + i = î)
    Opt-e + Letter = Accented letter
    (Opt-e + ó)
    Opt-n + Letter = An n-yayed letter
    (Opt-n + n = ñ)

    That's all I know off the top of my head. The only won I use regularily is the umlaut key for German, excuse the lack of knowledge on the real words for some of the kinds of accents. :P

    But this is about the damndest easiest way to do it, less using a kb layout for a language which uses these letters.

    If you ever need to find out how to do these again, open up Keycaps, in /Applications/Utilities. When it is open, hold down the option key, and it will show you all the characters which are typed when you do option-key. The keys with a white square highlighted are those which are combined with other letters to create accented letters.

    It's a helluva lot better than ALT codes on WinDOS. :)

  • Unicode is fine (Score:5, Informative)

    by kalidasa ( 577403 ) on Friday May 09, 2003 @07:46PM (#5923040) Journal
    Unicode works fine in any Cocoa app,
    including TextEdit, Safari, iCal, Finder,
    Address Book, Mail, the new Nisus beta,
    etc. The apps that have problems are
    all Carbon, because they don't invoke
    ATSUI properly: MS Office v.X, AppleWorks,
    Internet Exploder, etc. while BBEdit (which
    should know better) is spotty for some
    writing systems in some cases.

    Even most of these apps can handle extended Latin, though. I'm guessing the poster didn't do his homework.

  • They've been doing... (Score:3, Informative)

    by XnetZERO ( 560391 ) on Friday May 09, 2003 @07:51PM (#5923072)
    ...the way Mac users have always done it! option + e and then e will produce an é option + u and then e will produce an ë option + n and then n will produce an ñ etc... etc... etc... If you're a switcher there are a few websites floating around with the intent to help switches or those new to Mac OS X. www.macfora.com www.macmentor.com www.macosx.com However, searching the built in Mac OS X help engine would have found what you were looking for by searching for 'accented characters'. Really don't know why people forget about help... It's there for a reason! But if you open the Key Caps utility and start pressing buttons (ie... try pushing shift, option, command and see what happens! also you can depress option and command at the same time!)

  • Adobe has a good cheat-sheet of key combinations for special characters on their Type Library [adobe.com] page. The quick link is http://www.adobe.com/type/pdfs/characcessmac.pdf [adobe.com]

  • Two ways: (Score:5, Informative)

    by NaveNosnave ( 670012 ) on Friday May 09, 2003 @07:57PM (#5923109)

    1) Fire up Key Caps, in your Utilities folder. Select the font you're using in the Font menu, and it will display all the default characters of a virtual keyboard. Try hitting the Shift key - you'll see the Shift key depress on the virtual keyboard, and the lowercase letters will change to uppercase, and numbers will change to the symbols that are universally recognized as cuss words for comic strip characters. Now try hitting the far more interesting Option (alt) key. Gaze in awe upon the alternate characters you can produce by typing Option-[character]. Also, notice the Option-[character]s with a light box around them? They're all diacritical marks - accents, umlaut, circumflex, etc. - that can be added to other letters. So, for example, if you want to put an umlaut (you know, the "Deathtöunge" dots) above an "o", you need to type Option-u, then an "o".

    2) Use the Character Palette. From Apple's godawful-slow Help System:

    To make the Character Palette available, open International preferences and click Input Menu. Select Character Palette in the list.

    To open the palette, choose Show Character Palette from the input menu (the one with the Character Palette symbol or the flag).

    To enter a character, choose the items you want to see from the View pop-up menu. Select the category of characters in the left column and double-click the character or symbol you want to enter in the right column.
    Evan Evanson
    • OS X's help system is wonderfully slow.

      As I type this in Safari, I can't help but wonder: how did they achieved such molassenesse?

      Yes, I know it's offtopic...
      • See, they had an HTML rendering engine before they started on Safari, it's the one in the help system. You'll notice they threw it out and adopted KHTML for Safari. As soon as Safari is out of beta you can expect them to update Help to use WebCore.

  • A couple options (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 09, 2003 @08:10PM (#5923184)
    You can use "dead keys". For example, Option-u will type a"dead-key" umlaut which will combine with the next character typed.

    You can use keycaps, as someone else mentioned.

    Both of these only get you the stuff available from your current key layout.

    For Cocoa apps, the TextExtras extension bundle (available at http://www.lorax.com/FreeStuff/TextExtras.html) has a built-in configurable character palette. One of the pre-defined panes in that panel has all the Unicode non-spacing marks. Clicking stuff in this panel will insert the clicked mark into the currently focused text area at the insertion point. In Unicode, non-spacing marks combine with the character before them.

    Not only does this panel let you type non-spacing marks unavailable from the keyboard, it also lets you compose stuff that the dead-key input rejects as non-sense (such as the all-important n-umlaut needed for the correct spelling of "Spinal Tap". Even better, you can stack multiple non-spacing marks on a single character this way.
  • While we're on the topic, does anyone have any experience using non-Latin alphabets on the Mac under OS X? I'm particularly interested in Arabic, since I'll be taking an Arabic composition class in the fall and it would be cool to type my papers, since my handwriting sucks.
    • Don't know much about the Arabic family of fonts but I use the greek and hebrew fonts for the biblical language program, Accordance. I've used many similar programs on the pc side but all of them had really, really crappy font mapping. On the mac it is really easy. The final Mem and nun (hebrew) and final sigma (grk) are added automatically at the end of words. Combination accents, (like a rough breathing mark and a circumflex over the selected vowel) only require 2 keystrokes as opposed to the 8 1/2 fi
    • I did a search of OS X Arabic in Google and came up with some info.

      http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/utilities_fonts_ ma cosx.html
      "Mac OS X 10.2 introduced support for Arabic, Devanagari, Greek, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Hebrew and Thai scripts."

    • Textedit actually does a pretty good job with typing Arabic. (You have to enable & learn the Arabic keyboard layout of course, & don't forget to right-justify;) It can get confusing if you're trying to use both Latin & Arabic in the same document, since selecting text becomes a bit of a nightmare. I'm sure it follows some kind of logic, but I've never figured it out.

      The thing I've been frustrated by is lack of web browser support. Camino & Safari both produce readable text now, but with st

    • i don't know about arabic but chinese works the same (and just as well - if not a little better) in X as it did in 9. input and display.

  • Character Palette (Score:2, Informative)

    by macmurph ( 622189 )
    You can activate a menuling called the 'Character Palette' that allows you to see all kinds of characters for all different kinds of fonts. Its very similar to the old PopChar control panel in MacOS 9.

    Go to the 'International' preference pane.
    Choose the Input Menu Tab.
    At the top of the list choose the check box for the Character Palette.
  • Did you look at the "International" section of the System Prefs?

    (I'm not sure if you need various langauges installed or not to do this.)

    The Input Method tab lists all the installed keyboard layouts. If you select more than one of these layouts, you'll see a little flag in the menu bar. This menu allows you to select your current keyboard layout. if using the mouse isn't your syle, command-space bar will rotate layouts.

    and there are other posts explaining how to use the option key to hit those internatio
  • I have found é and à accents. What I would like to know is how to do other accents - in particluar, for use writing pinyin. In Mandarin é would be the third tone, à would be the fourth tone. I'd like to know how to write the first and second tones for a letter.

    (First tone is a bar on top of the letter, second is a little u on top of the letter - to indicate a falling then rising tone).

    Thanks!
    • Well, I haven't investigated this in OS X, but in OS 9 and before there were pinyin fonts you could easily get that showed proper tone marks (for example, Rich's Pinyin fonts [richd.com]).

      This brief collection of pages [yale.edu] at Yale gives more info about OS X and Chinese inputting.

    • First, go to the international panel of System Preferences.app, select the Input Menu tab, and select US Extended checkbox. This will will add an input menu to the menu bar, and select "US Extended". Then go to /Applications/Utilities/Key Caps.app. Press the option key, The keycaps program will highlight all the dead keys. First tone seems to be option-a, second tone is option-b.
      • I don't have my mac on me, but as I recall the third and forth tones when you input them they highlight in yello and then if you press a vowel afterwards the accent will be put over top the character. The other two accents (first and second) are available as extended keys but they don't do the same - they only print the accent, you can't put a character under it.
        • nope, alangmead was right. Opt-a will make a (yellow-highlighted) bar, which will land on top of whatever vowel you type next. Opt-b is the same for the 2nd tone.
          • Oops, forgot to clarify, that's in the "U.S. Extended" keyboard layout. Incidentally, this layout (and any Unicode-based ones) won't work in every app. Textedit is fine though, & is actually what I mostly use for text editing these days.
          • I know - I managed to figure it out. Only two things left for me to figure out. The first is how to remove the US keyboard now that I use US Extended (the option to remove it is greyed out). The second is how to do a u that has a tone on it in addition to the umlaut.
            • You probably don't want to remove the US keyboard, as not all applications support Unicode. See this site [mac.com] for a keyboard layout that supports all the Latin blocks (Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement, Latin Extended-A, Latin Extended-B, and Latin Extended Additional)

              Not all fonts support these, although Gentium [sil.org] supports every possible Latinate Unicode 3.0 glyph, and up to three levels of diacretics.

  • Enable the Character Paletter Menu (Score:5, Informative)

    by Paul Burney ( 560340 ) * on Friday May 09, 2003 @10:33PM (#5923794) Homepage
    As an old timer, I use the option+ keyboard shortcuts mentioned by others. However, OS X includes a nice, easily accessible Character Palette for those who don't want to type key combos.

    Go to the International Preference Pane, click on input menu at the right side and check on the character palette item. Now you'll see a little menu next to the last option in the menu bar. Click it to get a bunch of key entry options. The one for accents is "accented latin."

    If you really like typing accented characters, try a software called PopChar Pro. I used to use it in OS 9 and I know there is an OS X version.
    • The flag that shows up is really annoying. I want to be able to switch between a regular US-type QWERTY keyboard and a French Canadian keyboard. Unforunately, as a Canadian, this means that I get a silly American flag on my desktop most of the time if I want a "normal" QWERTY keyboard. Is there any way to change the graphic so that I don't have to have a stars-and-stripes on my desktop?'

  • Get this book: (Score:4, Informative)

    by speleo ( 61031 ) * on Friday May 09, 2003 @10:41PM (#5923826) Homepage
    "The Mac is not a Typewriter" by Robin Williams.

    This book is cicra 1990 but the basics of accenting and typing special characters on the Mac hasn't changed.
  • I live and work in Spain and need to use Spanish characters everyday. I bought my laptop in Britain, so the keymap is British. I just switch between keymaps with option-apple-spacebar and don't pay any attention to what the keys read when type. It works fine. Same if I have to use a US keyboard, or any keymap. In short just learn a keymap that gives the characters you need and use it!
  • While I don't have osX, I do have Unix boxes.

    Perhaps there is a tool that can intercept keycombos etc, etc to Unicode ... and can be recompiled for osX, linux etc?
  • As has been said, simply use the option key (with a step-like icon, also mis-labelled "alt" on some keyboards). Then explore the keyboard.

    Ah, if your name were Håkan, you'd know what option-a does. And see, if your French girlfriend's name were Fran(option-c)oise... Oooh, here comes Bj(option-o)rn.
    • use the option key (with a step-like icon, also mis-labelled "alt" on some keyboards)

      As we're so intensly discussing the option/alt key, here's a little-known fact: the icon for that key does not symbolize a "step", but a train-track-switch.

      So it's the spot where a train has the "option" (choice), to take an "alt"ernative route: to go left or right. This symbolizes what use of the option key nearly always comes down to: do the same thing in a slightly different way.

      Once you know it, it's very logical, b
  • The above comments about option-<key> works. Also, if you would like to change the keyboard layout, you can do that by going to System Preferences->International and select the Input Menu tab. Here you can select from US, US Extended, Unicode Hex Input, Dvorak, Dvorak - QWERTY command and all kinds of other international keyboard layouts. This is under 10.2.6, I think pre 10.2 the tab menu is called Keyboard.

    After selecting the ones you want, a little flag should show up on the menubar which al
  • While all the Mac font gurus are together in one place, i wonder if anyone can explain this?
    In my terminal, typing l/ (lowercase l and a forward slash) produces a single character which looks like the l but with a small diagonal line running through it. It only does this in certain fonts, including monaco (which is the default font and imo the best looking 'terminal' type font).
    It's not just typing l/, it's any time when l/ is displayed. So directory listings are usually really messy.
    Helpfully, it does not

  • AZERTY keyboard (Score:3, Informative)

    by paradesign ( 561561 ) on Saturday May 10, 2003 @03:12PM (#5926857) Homepage
    this is the standard for european countries that rely heavily on acents. countries like France, and Spain ust them i know. im even typing on one right now. on them all you do is hit the accent required like then hit the letter required, like ö ë ä é è ç £ ù ò ù ëtc... look into one of these if you are going to be using acents extensivly. see it in action here [sun.com]

    apple has the best language support if you ask me, so this shouldnt be a problem at all. you can always use keycaps.

    • his is the standard for european countries that rely heavily on acents. countries like France, and Spain

      Spain doesn't use AZERTY. Only France and Francophone countries do.

  • Input Menu (Score:2, Informative)

    by GabrielF ( 636907 )
    Launch System Preferences go to International and select Input Menu. Select whatever keyboard layout you want (I use Spanish and English). Whenever you need to use that keyboard layout hit option-cmd-space to go to the next keyboard layout. It's a little cumbersome but when you get used to it its very quick.
  • It's all quite simple. Check out key caps and make sure you're using a font that has extended character sets. option+e then typing and "e" will result in é. you can extrapolate from there!
  • option-e for á etc
    option-i for â etc
    option-u for ä etc
    option-n for ã etc
    option-` for à etc
    option-c for ©

    Why did it take 3 years to make the macs accent key shortcuts to a notice?

    Can someone tell me if the windows accent keys have any logic? I hate those alt-132, alt-256 etc combo strakes..
  • I had mine set to swedish for years, because i got all my 'dead' keys. Now i have bought a swedish keybord and it's so much easier than an international one. good luck finding all your key combo's
  • I really wonder if the person who moderates the apple section on slashdot has ever used a mac.

    This l33t hax0r mac trick has been a basic part of Mac OS FOREVER, i remember being told in school how using [option]+XXX on a mac was so much easier than resorting to an ascii table, which you'd have to do on a PC at the time.

    And it's not that Mac OS doesn't come with a keycaps application either.

  • Dead keys on Macs (Score:3, Informative)

    by Millennium ( 2451 ) on Sunday May 11, 2003 @10:17PM (#5933789)
    Macs have a dead-key scheme of their own. Option-character, and then the character you want accented.

    On a US keyboard layout, the keys are as follows:
    • U - ümlaüt
    • E - gravé accént
    • I - cîrcumflex
    • N - tilde (ñ)
    • C - çedilla (not actually a dead-key, since it only works with C, but it's common enough to be mentioned here).
    • ` - àcute àccent


      • This is pretty US-centric, because each character used is the letter which people in the US usually see most commonly with that accent (none of these are common in US English, but they are common enough in loanwords and in snippets of other languages seen sometimes). The exception to this is the acute accent, which is seldom seen in the US at all, so it was given the ` key, which looks like an acute accent anyway.

        Incidentally, this is not a new feature on Mac OS X. It has worked this way since at least the System 6 days, and probably even earlier than that. Although some of the bad Carbon ports out there don't provide the same visual feedback that Cocoa and ATSUI do, the key combinations will still work. They even work in the Terminal.
  • ...You insensitive clods!

    Anyone else notice this? Mine's a UK keyboard layout, but the lack of this key makes my life mildly difficult, especially when coding perl/xml.

  • It's got a good subset of the Mac option-combinations (plus the windows alt-codes should one ever be in such a situation): http://www.lrb.co.uk/store/mmat.php [lrb.co.uk]

  • Apple makes keyboards with accented characters, they may only be available in their respective markets. I live in Canada, and the Canadian Apple store has 2 keyboard options: US English and French Canadian
  • Maybe I'm just a masochist, but I find typing with non-US keyboard layouts perfectly usable. My alternate language is Hungarian, which uses a lot of accented characters, many of which are not used in many other languages. Simply enabling the kayboard layout under the "Input Menu" tab of the "International" system preferences makes it easy to access, and after a short while it's easy to get used to the meanings of various keys.
  • People, re-read the question before responding!

    The question is: How does one use a true deadkey such as apostrophe, AND ONLY APOSTROPHE for accented characters in Mac OS X?

    Think back to touch typing class: you learned SHIFT and only SHIFT to modify characters. OPTION is a computer convention great for keyboard short cuts but is maddening for touch typists who hope to type as quickly in their native language as one can in English.

    The only valid answers have been those regarding non-English keyboard maps t
  • There is also an application called TypeIt4Me that lets you define all the character macros you want. Basically it works with OS X by copying your default keyboard file and then adding to it as you add macros. See http://www.typeit4me.com for more information.
  • Author:
    ...and a Google search doesn't yield anything that really works.


    A simple Google search of:

    us international mac keyboard ...reveals as a first hit a website which has tips on implementing this by yourself. As a second hit a ready-made keyboard layout for US International.

    If in the future "survival of the fittest" boils down to understanding Google searches, I pity the author...

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