Mac 101: Typing accents, remember the option key

I wrote this http://mac.sillydog.org/archives/001703.php a while back. Hope it can be useful.

@ pierre (#19): In fact Mac OS X has an alternative input method for Unicode characters, though it involves at least one more step than in Windows. You have to enable the Unicode Hex input keyboard layout. After that you just switch to this keyboard layout and enjoy the entire Unicode universe by pressing option+Unicode number.

Obviously, this is useful only when you need an occasional exotic glyph or two. For a detailed discussion on Unicode and Mac OS X, including alternatives for character input, see e.g. the second part of Matt Neuburgs excellent article:
http://db.tidbits.com/article/6780

Some people prefer the 'Windows way', i.e. typing the accent before the character. You can have that if you want to by using the keyboard layout from http://brockerhoff.net/usi/index.html

Note that this is from a new feature. Accents worked the same way back in 1984 when the Mac was introduced.

Note that these "accent mark keys" are shown in the Keyboard Viewer in orange, so you can easily find them for any language-specific keyboard layout.


@Pierre: hit the accent key and immediately after hit the required character to be combined with the accentkey

For any accents directly accessible via the keyboard, this works exactly the same on a Macintosh, but for any accents not found on the keyboard, you'll have to resort to the archaic ALT- way on Windows, whereas on the Mac, you just type a key combination instead of a key, e.g., Option-u to "arm" the Mac for entering an umlaut with those two dots on top. If you use such accented letters regularly, these keyboard combinations will become second nature in no time. Learning those keycodes, though, ... *sigh*

@ HandyMac: Thanks for the reply. Indeed, it did not work because I had not the Intl English layout.

@Guillaume: Not sure what you're trying to do with the control key. If you want accented letters with the standard U.S. keyboard, you use the option key, e.g. option-e + e = é, and so on. Open Mac Help and search for "accent" to get an explanation. The ability to type common Western European accented letters on the standard U.S. keyboard using the option key has been part of the Mac OS since the original Mac in 1984. For more in-depth information about international Mac use, see "Unleash Your Multilingual Mac":
http://homepage.mac.com/thgewecke/mlingos9.html

I am still disappointed with the Unix/Linux/OSX way of working with accents. Microsoft simply does a much better job: hit the accent key and immediately after hit the required character to be combined with the accentkey. It's almost the same as with the old typing machines we used ages ago. By this means you don't need to remember anything, just select the proper character set like US international, dutch, german, ...

I definetly prefer Apple/OSX but still don't understand why people keep on strugling with the accents while a perfect approach is available for years already with Microsoft. I am sure lots of people would be willing to pay a couple of bucks to get the same working with OSX.

Hi,
Perhaps I'm stupid, but on my 2 macs this doesnot work. I
typecontrol key, then with the control key still pressed, I type e,
but I get a greek letter. What is wrong? How can you do it ?

There's a free, handy CharacterPal widget here:

http://www.tacowidgets.com/widgets/characterpal/

...mouseover the character and the key combo appears.