Re: AbiWord and special characters

Jeff Hostetler (jeff@abisource.com)
Thu, 23 Sep 1999 10:04:51 -0500


Aaron Lehmann wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I use AbiWord a lot for everyday work, and now that I'm learning French
> I'm wondering if there's a way to use accents in AbiWord. I'm relatively
> ignorant about the conventions for things like this on PC's and in X
> windows. I used to use a Mac, where special characters could be made using
> the option key. Does any support for such characters exist in AbiWord and
> if so, how can I use them?

yes, we support all of the latin-1 accent chars.
the hard part is just figuring out how to enter
them :-) [or for me, figuring out all of the
different ways that other people enter them :-]

on X:
grab a copy of jwz's xkeycaps program (or you can
use the stock xmodmap program). you can either:
[] select a different keyboard layout (and learn
to type all over again :-(
[] bind some of the keys to 'dead-char' prefixes
(see the ISO charset and the various dead_ keysyms)
(for example, bind tilde (`) to dead_grave and then
hit that key and 'a' and you'll get the a-grave
character.)
[] or you could bind one or more keys (like the
Function keys) to just the set of accented chars
that you'll be needing.
[] i'm sure there are other options, perhaps some
of our friends in europe could comment ??

on Win32:
[] install a new keyboard layout (try the
international US/English one -- this keeps all
the characters in the same place, but adds the
accented chars on one or more modifiers).

hope this helps,
jeff



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