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Subject:Re: Typing French or other accents From:"Townsend,Emru" <etownsend -at- POSITRON -dot- QC -dot- CA> Date:Fri, 9 Oct 1998 15:04:50 -0400
The solution for those in France (and Canada, especially Quebec) is to get a
French keyboard. France uses the AZERTY layout (A and Z swap with QWERTY's
Q and W, and there are a few punctuation remappings as well for good
measure), and Canadians would use one of the many French Canadian keyboard
variants, which are identical to US keyboards but with extra markings on the
right side of several keys.
That's only half the solution, though, since the individual keys still send
the same impulses to the computer (i.e., the key next to the right Shift key
sends the same impulse, regardless of whether the keycap has a slash or an
accented 'e' on it). The next step is to switch your computer over to the
appropriate keyboard setting (problematic for French Canadian keyboards,
since there's only one setting in a given OS and umpteen keyboard
variations).
This gets you the accented characters with minimal fuss (though some require
a chart -- unless you've got a great memory -- and some digital gymnastics),
but other than that you get no benefit above those from entering the
characters with the ASCII codes. Regardless of how it's generated, an
accented e doesn't have much chance surviving e-mail.
If you'd want to do it Stateside, you could set your keyboard to French
(through DOS or Windows or whatever OS you use), even if you don't have the
right keyboard. This isn't as painful as it sounds, since not all the
symbols on your average French Canadian keyboard actually match the
DOS/Windows French Canadian keyboard spec anyway. If you really must have a
bilingual keyboard, make a deductible (it is business related, right?) trip
to Montreal, put some money into our economy, and buy one for something
like $40 Canadian (about 50 cents US).
Happy Friday,
Emru Townsend
Technical Communicator Dude - Product Integration
Positron Public Safety Systems Inc.
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
e-mail: etownsend -at- positron -dot- qc -dot- ca
My words are my own. Confuse them with my employer's at your own risk.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: JIMCHEVAL -at- AOL -dot- COM [SMTP:JIMCHEVAL -at- AOL -dot- COM]
> Sent: Friday, October 09, 1998 2:26 PM
> To: TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
> Subject: Typing French or other accents
>
> While I know there are ASCII techniques and all for typing in French
> accents,
> what happens for those of you typing from France? Do you simply use a
> French
> keyboard and get the right characters (with accents) in e-mail and HTML,
> or do
> you have to do something special?
>
> Do the more technical of you have any idea how to make it that simple if
> doing
> it from Stateside?
>
