How to type in Foreign Alphabet

Jim Cobban

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Jan 4, 2000, 3:00:00 AM1/4/00

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I am creating a document which has fairly extensive insertions in
foreign languages, particularly French and Greek. The only way to
insert this text that I have found searching through the help and the
menus is to insert it one letter at a time from the Symbol menu. As you
can imagine that is excruciatingly painful for anything over one short
word, never mind whole paragraphs.

How can I shift into a foreign keyboard configuration temporarily to
enter this text and then shift back into English?

By the way the Multilingual section of Insert Symbol is missing the
undotted i which I need for inserting text in Gaelic. It is in
ISO8859/1.

--
Jim Cobban jco...@magma.ca
34 Palomino Dr.
Kanata, ON, CANADA
K2M 1M1
+1-613-592-9438

thesnaguy.vcf

Xavier Basora

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Jan 4, 2000, 3:00:00 AM1/4/00

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Jim:
Why are you using Windows symbols? Use CRTL W Choose the Multilingual option
and all of the Westenr European and Turkish letters are there's also one for
Greek. Another way to add greek words is to download this macro at
http://utopia.knoware.nl/users/wsmout/wpassist.html
To change keyboards in Windows, you need to install the International
keyboards you want and then activate them. You'll be able to switch back and
forth as in the system tray you'll see a blue square with the 2 letter code
for the active language.
Another way is to use the quick correct/quick format for the most common
French and Greek words
Xavier

Charles Rossiter

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Jan 5, 2000, 3:00:00 AM1/5/00

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Jim,

Ctrl+W 1,239 gives you the undotted i.

Jim Cobban wrote:
>
> I am creating a document which has fairly extensive insertions in
> foreign languages, particularly French and Greek. The only way to
> insert this text that I have found searching through the help and the
> menus is to insert it one letter at a time from the Symbol menu. As you
> can imagine that is excruciatingly painful for anything over one short
> word, never mind whole paragraphs.
>
> How can I shift into a foreign keyboard configuration temporarily to
> enter this text and then shift back into English?
>
> By the way the Multilingual section of Insert Symbol is missing the
> undotted i which I need for inserting text in Gaelic. It is in
> ISO8859/1.
>
> --
> Jim Cobban jco...@magma.ca
> 34 Palomino Dr.
> Kanata, ON, CANADA
> K2M 1M1
> +1-613-592-9438
>

> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Name: thesnaguy.vcf
> thesnaguy.vcf Type: vcf (text/x-vcard)
> Encoding: 7bit
> Description: Card for Jim Cobban

--
Charles Rossiter
(South Africa)
Volunteer C_Tech
{Please reply to group only}

Jim Cobban

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Jan 5, 2000, 3:00:00 AM1/5/00

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Xavier Basora wrote:

> Jim:
> Why are you using Windows symbols? Use CRTL W Choose the Multilingual option
> and all of the Westenr European and Turkish letters are there's also one for
> Greek.

That is just a shortcut to the same laborious one character at a time technique
for creating this text.

> Another way to add greek words is to download this macro at
> http://utopia.knoware.nl/users/wsmout/wpassist.html
> To change keyboards in Windows, you need to install the International
> keyboards you want and then activate them. You'll be able to switch back and
> forth as in the system tray you'll see a blue square with the 2 letter code
> for the active language.

Thank you. I think that is the ticket.

> Another way is to use the quick correct/quick format for the most common
> French and Greek words

I can see this working for French, but for Greek I would have to have typed the
word in the first place, which I cannot do with an English keyboard. The other
thing is that the Greek I am including is classical Greek, whereas the Greek
supported by WP is modern Demotic Greek. There is only a relatively small
overlap in vocabulary between the two. But thanks for the suggestion anyway.

Oh and as I searched farther down the multilingual code page I found the dotless
i that I need for Gaelic. I just expected to find it with the other i's for
western alphabets.

thesnaguy.vcf

Jim Cobban

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Jan 5, 2000, 3:00:00 AM1/5/00

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Charles Rossiter wrote:

> Jim,
>
> Ctrl+W 1,239 gives you the undotted i.

Thank you, I finally found it by scrolling down right to the end. I expected to
find it near the other i's used in western alphabets, including the i with acute
accent which is also used in Gaelic. You specified the code point number
1,239. If I don't have a copy of ISO8859 laying around handy, how would I
figure that out?

thesnaguy.vcf

Manolis Christodoulou

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Jan 5, 2000, 3:00:00 AM1/5/00

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Jim Cobban wrote:
>
> I am creating a document which has fairly extensive insertions in
> foreign languages, particularly French and Greek. The only way to
> insert this text that I have found searching through the help and the
> menus is to insert it one letter at a time from the Symbol menu. As you
> can imagine that is excruciatingly painful for anything over one short
> word, never mind whole paragraphs.

What version of windows do you have? There is one (PanEuropean) with all
the support: Code pages, keyboard drivers, fonts.

But do you have to write also letters in old greek? Then you have to use
WP Symbols through Ctrl-W for the accents.

Cletus Stripling

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Jan 5, 2000, 3:00:00 AM1/5/00

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The best thing to do is to edit the keyboard layout so you can use various
keys or combinations of keys to insert the appropriate characters. Follow
this rough guideline:

1. Choose Tools, Settings.
2. Double-Click on the Customize icon.
3. Click the "keyboards" tab.
4. Edit the keyboard layout by clicking "Edit". Not you might want to make a
copy and edit the copy.
5. WP will display a dialog box with a list of all keyboard shortcut
sequences that can be programmed.
6. Select the desired keyboard shortcut by clicking on it. For example,
scroll down and find A+Alt (which means you want to be able to use Alt+A to
insert the desired character or symbol.
7. In the right hand side of this dialog box, click the keystrokes tab.
8. Click the insertion point into the input area for the desired keystrokes.
9. Press Ctrl+W to access the Symbols dialog box.
10. Locate the desired character set and symbol. For example, to have the
Alt+A insert Greek Alpha, choose the Greek Character Set from the symbol
dialog box. Click the alpha symbol and click "Insert and Close".
11. Click the button labeled "Assign Keystroke to key".
12. Click OK and Close until you return the document screen.

Now try pressing Alt+a to see if it works. This is an extremely powerful
feature that a lot of people overlook.

Cletus Stripling
The University of Georgia

Jim Cobban <thes...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:38726550...@hotmail.com...

> I am creating a document which has fairly extensive insertions in
> foreign languages, particularly French and Greek. The only way to
> insert this text that I have found searching through the help and the
> menus is to insert it one letter at a time from the Symbol menu. As you
> can imagine that is excruciatingly painful for anything over one short
> word, never mind whole paragraphs.
>

> How can I shift into a foreign keyboard configuration temporarily to
> enter this text and then shift back into English?
>
> By the way the Multilingual section of Insert Symbol is missing the
> undotted i which I need for inserting text in Gaelic. It is in
> ISO8859/1.
>

Cletus Stripling

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Jan 5, 2000, 3:00:00 AM1/5/00

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By the way I just tried this in WP9 with SP2 installed and the keystroke
doesn't work the first time. Afterwards it seems to continue to work.
Starting a new document has the same results. Also does the same thing with
other keys, like alt+b for beta.
The first time I get just an uppercase A or uppercase B but afterwards it
inserts the proper characters of this editing session.

Anyone else notice this? A Bug??

Cletus Stripling <cstr...@arches.uga.edu> wrote in message
news:38739ab7@cnews...

Charles Rossiter

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Jan 6, 2000, 3:00:00 AM1/6/00

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Jim,

You just have to be prepared to look :-{

I have no Iso8859 around, and I am not sure that it is relevant here.

Jim Cobban wrote:
>
> Charles Rossiter wrote:
>
> > Jim,
> >
> > Ctrl+W 1,239 gives you the undotted i.
>
> Thank you, I finally found it by scrolling down right to the end. I expected to
> find it near the other i's used in western alphabets, including the i with acute
> accent which is also used in Gaelic. You specified the code point number
> 1,239. If I don't have a copy of ISO8859 laying around handy, how would I
> figure that out?
>

> --
> Jim Cobban jco...@magma.ca
> 34 Palomino Dr.
> Kanata, ON, CANADA
> K2M 1M1
> +1-613-592-9438
>

Charles Rossiter

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Jan 6, 2000, 3:00:00 AM1/6/00

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Cletus,

Are you trying to insert an alpha at the start of a sentence? With
default options, this would be inserted as an ALPHA. Check in Reveal
Codes to determine whether this is an ALPHA or an A that has been
inserted.

> > > --
> > > Jim Cobban jco...@magma.ca
> > > 34 Palomino Dr.
> > > Kanata, ON, CANADA
> > > K2M 1M1
> > > +1-613-592-9438
> > >
> > >
> >
> >

--

Cletus Stripling

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Jan 6, 2000, 3:00:00 AM1/6/00

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Thanks Charles! You're right. I guess quickcorrect is what is causing this
one. Glad to know it isn't a bug!

Charles Rossiter <ross...@iafrica.com> wrote in message
news:387497B3...@iafrica.com...

Jim Cobban

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Jan 6, 2000, 3:00:00 AM1/6/00

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Cletus Stripling wrote:

> The best thing to do is to edit the keyboard layout so you can use various
> keys or combinations of keys to insert the appropriate characters.

Thank you.

thesnaguy.vcf

Andy Grossman

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Jan 9, 2000, 3:00:00 AM1/9/00

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There is no trouble whatsoever with French (except when copying from another
word processing program, see below). The easiest way (I do this every day)
is to set up Win98 to emulate a Candian (some people prefer Brazilian)
keyboard: these keep most of the keys in the same place as a US keyboard,
unlike a French keyboard. You can then create é for example by hitting the /
key (the / moves to upper case 3) and è by a combination of ' and e -- and
so on.

Greek is another problem. You can create Greek characters in a Windows
environment, or in WinWord by emulating a Greek keyboard (?????...) but I
get gibberish in WP 9.0 with this. CNTRL-W does work, but provides a font
that is not quite so nice, and certainly isn't easy to work with.

For my book, which has citations in Greek, Turkish, Czech and other Eastern
languages, the CNTRL-W fonts were unsatisfactory and unprofessional-looking.
I finally copied the whole book (or the word-processed part of it, about 50
pages) into Word. I posted to this newsgroup a query on Turkish and Czech,
which were causing particular problems, but got no reply. And I speculated I
would have to buy the Russian, Czech, Turkish etc. versions of WP 9.0 to
make the thing work; obviously for an academic treatise that is a
non-starter.

If you don't have Win98, you will still be able to set up a keyboard
emulation, but not so neatly (with Win98 you click on a blue-language box in
the lower right-hand corner and select the language you want; you can change
languages in mid-stream.

Andy Grossman
University College London SLAIS

Jim Cobban <thes...@hotmail.com> wrote in message

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