need help switching to French layout

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j355
Posts: 3
Joined: 2006-12-03 13:20:59

need help switching to French layout

Post by j355 »

Is there a reference that someone can point me to to see which keys map to which French accented letters?

Any documentation on using Nisus to write in another language would be appreciated as well.

I am trying to switch betwen writing in French and writing in English but I am not having much luck. Plus I can not find all the keys for the accents, etc...

thx
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xiamenese
Posts: 543
Joined: 2006-12-08 00:46:44
Location: London or Exeter, UK

Re: need help switching to French layout

Post by xiamenese »

j355 wrote:Is there a reference that someone can point me to to see which keys map to which French accented letters?

Any documentation on using Nisus to write in another language would be appreciated as well.

I am trying to switch betwen writing in French and writing in English but I am not having much luck. Plus I can not find all the keys for the accents, etc...

thx
Are you a recent switcher to the Mac? And do you want to switch to the French keyboard, or type the accented characters while retaining the English keyboard?
If you want to switch to the French keyboard, go to Preferences:International and choose the <input menu> page, scroll down and select the keyboard for the version of French you use. Also make sure <keyboard viewer> is selected so that you can use that to learn the key assignments. When you've turned on alternate keyboards, you get a menu on the right showing the flag of the language whose keyboard is active and you find the keyboard viewer there too. I can't help you with the French keyboard as I don't know it ... I use the British keyboard.
If you want to work through your English keyboard, then option+e gives you acute accent (you type the accent then the letter); option+` gives you grave; option+u gives you umlaut; option+i gives you circumflex; option+n gives you tilde; option+c gives you lowercase c-cedilla; and option+C gives you uppercase C-cedilla. The keyboard viewer shows all the key assignments in all combinations of modifier keys ... hold down any of shift, option or shift+option and you will see what is assigned to what key.
It's also worth going into NWE preferences to make sure keyboards, languages and fonts change together (and set your dictionary and thesaurus if available) and then set a keystroke for each language so you can switch easily. I have command+opt+b for British English and command+opt+h for Chinese (Hanyu) but it has to be control+opt+f for French, as I have command+opt+f for footnotes, and I hardly ever write in French.
HTH
Mark
j355
Posts: 3
Joined: 2006-12-03 13:20:59

Post by j355 »

Mark,

Thank you very much. yes that helped.

I found them éèçàù missing a few, but I can work with this for now.

Thanks again.
offbyone
Posts: 5
Joined: 2007-01-21 13:19:52
Location: France

Post by offbyone »

[quote="j355"] I found them éèçàù missing a few, but I can work with this for now. [/quote]
You found how to type é You can type á, ó, etc., the same way:
Option+e for ´, then the letter you want to accent.
î, ô, û etc. are done the same, but with the i key: Option+i, then the letter you want to accent.
Hint: the key you press with Option to get the accent sometime is and sometimes is not the same key you press for the letter you want to accent.
à, è, ò and ù are typed the same way, using Option+` (except that the ` key is not a letter key, of course).
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