Language characters

[Kell75]

I've recently made a connection with relatives in Sweden. We are in the process of sharing our various data - and I want to be as accurate as I can when entering into my records. But, for the life of me I can't figure out how to use the various characters in some of the names. I have the language icon shown in the help function, and I see the Swedish keyboard in it, and I see the character I want, but how do I get it out of that and into the name I want? I'm sure I'm missing something simple.

Thanks!

[Dennis J. Cunniff]

Re: Language characters

I've recently made a connection with relatives in Sweden...But, for the life of me I can't figure out how to use the various characters in some of the names.

You can keep your normal keyboard. For Swedish you'll need å, ä, and ö.

You type an "å" by typing option-a.
You type an "ä" by typing option-u, then a
You type an "ö" by typing option-u, then o

(that is, to put an umlaut over a letter, type option-u then that letter)

If you don't want to bother learning those shortcuts, you can just type the base letter you want (either a or o), but hold the key down. A menu will appear showing the various kinds of a's or o's you might want, you just type the number corresponding to that choice.

[kmgenealogy]

Re: Language characters

Dennis, That is so cool! I have a friend who uses the ë on the end of her name. Now I can easily write it correctly! Thanks so much!

[Dennis J. Cunniff]

Re: Language characters

I have a friend who uses the ë on the end of her name. Now I can easily write it correctly!

You're welcome...

People love it when you respect their diacritics

[Barnbarroch]

Re: Language characters

You can keep your normal keyboard. For Swedish you'll need å, ä, and ö.

You type an "å" by typing option-a.
You type an "ä" by typing option-u, then a
You type an "ö" by typing option-u, then o

(that is, to put an umlaut over a letter, type option-u then that letter)

If you don't want to bother learning those shortcuts, you can just type the base letter you want (either a or o), but hold the key down. A menu will appear showing the various kinds of a's or o's you might want, you just type the number corresponding to that choice.

Thanks, Dennis, I didn't know that worked on a Mac either! On an iPad, I'd found it, but on the computer it comes as news! Brilliant, thanks.
Jamie.

[rodrigue]

Re: Language characters

Thanks, Dennis, I didn't know that worked on a Mac either! On an iPad, I'd found it, but on the computer it comes as news! Brilliant, thanks.
Jamie.

On a Mac, you can visualize the different characters you can get with different combinations by opening the Keyboard Viewer in the Menu Bar. I have joined screen captures of my own keyboard; the first one shows the keyboard with the normal characters; the second one shows the keyboard with the characters you get when clicking the Option key (this is from the French Canadian keyboard).

Réal.

[rwalcik]

Re: Language characters

With recent versions of OS X (don't remember if it was introduced with 10.8 or 10.9, holding down a letter key that has options for diacritical markings for a few seconds will open a popup window from which you can select the one you want.

[Dennis J. Cunniff]

Re: Language characters

Thanks, Dennis, I didn't know that worked on a Mac either!

I think it's new as of the Yosemite version, so it doesn't work on old versions of OS X.

But I'm happy that the feature made its way from iOS to OS X.

[kmgenealogy]

Re: Language characters

I think it's new as of the Yosemite version, so it doesn't work on old versions of OS X.

But I'm happy that the feature made its way from iOS to OS X.

Nope, it works on Mavericks, too! Just have to hold the key down for a moment.

[ttl]

Re: Language characters

And Mountain Lion, if you mean having the select-by-the-number popup.

[Peter Cook]

Re: Language characters

I think it's new as of the Yosemite version, so it doesn't work on old versions of OS X.

Been around for a while Dennis - also works in 10.8.x (Mountain Lion) and thus presumably in Mavericks as well.

[Gato]

Re: Language characters

With recent versions of OS X (don't remember if it was introduced with 10.8 or 10.9, holding down a letter key that has options for diacritical markings for a few seconds will open a popup window from which you can select the one you want.

Wow. I have been a Mac user since 1985, and I'm a longtime heavy user of the Mac OS superior foreign language capability in Spanish, German, Chinese and Japanese in particular, but I didn't know that trick. Works like a charm in Reunion 10, in Microsoft Word documents, and in the Finder when renaming a folder or file, but seems not to be a universal shortcut applicable to all applications. For instance, it does not work in Adobe Bridge.

Thanks for the tip.

[Dennis J. Cunniff]

Re: Language characters

Been around for a while Dennis - also works in 10.8.x (Mountain Lion) and thus presumably in Mavericks as well.

Cool. I guess I'm just a late discoverer

[Alasdair Mackie]

Re: Language characters

You learn something every day! I've had various language keyboards set up in the top bar, switching between them as necessary to get my ß and é characters from the keyboard map! I wish I knew this years ago!

[Junior Waldo]

Re: Language characters

Thanks for asking the question and thanks for the answer! This is fantastic and I didn't have a clue.