ctrl-alt-5

Regular readers will notice that my recent blog entries have a new feature. I have started using the French IME. Here is how I installed it on Windows XP (Tablet PC Edition):

1) From the Start button, select Settings > Control Panel.
2) Double click the "Regional and Language Options".
3) Choose the "Languages" tab.
4) Press the "Details..." button.
5) Press "Add...".
6) Under Input Language choose "French (France)".
7) In the "Keyboard layout/IME" choose "United States-International".
8) Press OK.

After that, I recommend clicking "Language Bar..." in the Preferences group of the Languages tab and making sure "Show additional Language bar icons in the taskbar" is checked.

Now look for the EN in a blue square on the task bar. Click it and change it FR. The current application will take that keyboard method.

Now what? Now comes the fun/frustrating part.

To put a diacritic over a letter, type the symbol, then the letter. Use ` or ' or ^ or ". The first 3 are obvious because they commonly go over vowels in that form. The " isn't so obvious. That is used to put an umlaut over a letter. Like haït. To get just the symbol, type the symbol, then a space. The space won't appear, but the symbol will.

To make the cedilia, you use the ' followed by c. Pollyvous Français?

Since France is close to Spain, they let you make the ñ, too.

And finally, the Euro symbol. Why not =C? or C=? Don't ask me. That would be too obvious. Instead, it's ctrl-alt-5.

Here are the ctrl-alt options for the numbers (note, these all show up on my PC--if they show up as squares or something on your PC, you may want to upgrade):

ctrl-alt-1: ¡ (upside down exclamation point)
ctrl-alt-2: ² (squared)
ctrl-alt-3: ³ (cubed)
ctrl-alt-4: ¤
ctrl-alt-5: € (euro)
ctrl-alt-6: ¼ (1/4)
ctrl-alt-7: ½ (1/2)
ctrl-alt-8: ¾ (3/4)
ctrl-alt-9: ‘ (open singe quote)
ctrl-alt-0: ’ (close single quote)
shift-ctrl-alt-1: ¹ (superscript 1)
shift-ctrl-alt-2: takes my focus to 2nd window in task bar
shift-ctrl-alt-3: takes my focus to 3rd window in task bar
shift-ctrl-alt-4: £ (British pound)
shift-ctrl-alt-5: takes my focus to 5th window in task bar
shift-ctrl-alt-6: takes my focus to 6th window in task bar
shift-ctrl-alt-7: takes my focus to 7th window in task bar
shift-ctrl-alt-8: takes my focus to 8th window in task bar
shift-ctrl-alt-9: takes my focus to 9th window in task bar
shift-ctrl-alt-0: nothing

There are a few others.
ctrl-alt-w=å (shift for capital. Now you can spell ångström)
ctrl-alt-r=® (registered trademark)
ctrl-alt-[=« (French style open quote)
ctrl-alt-]=» (French style close quote)
ctrl-alt-s=ß (German eszet)
ctrl-alt-d=ð (Not common but I knew a guy online from the Faröe Islands and he used it)
ctrl-alt-l=ø (You see it from time to time. Shift to capitalize)
ctrl-alt-z=æ (shift to capitalize)
ctrl-alt-n=ñ (Español)
ctrl-alt-?=¿ (Español)
ctrl-alt-:=° (Degrees--: is shift semicolon ;)
ctrl-alt--=¥ (Japanese yen)
shift-ctrl-alt-c=¢ (cents)

Seems pretty comprehensive, doesn't it? Is there anything in standard French that you can't type now? Well, languages wouldn't be frustrating if you could do everything. The Œ and œ don't have an easy way. The French word for fetus is fœtus, and work is œuvre, for example. At least in the Collins dictionary. Supposedly, if you press alt and type 0140 or 0156 on the keypad, you can get these characters. But I have laptop with a 'fn' key and when I use it to try to turn on the virtual keypad, the fn-alt-4 where the '4' is on the 'U' key, causes some weird behavior. Some of these key sequences also bring up an ATI Catalyst Control Center for my graphics card.

Anyway, it's not too hard. It's a tad clumsy and takes some getting used to, but it's kind of fun to actually enter all these French words correctly.