My now being a student of Irish, it seemed appropriate to teach my keyboard some new tricks. So, I went into my computer’s in-house selection, and clicked on “Irish”, and, now that there’s an “Irish” icon on my toolbar, I can shift keyboard modes in two clicks, thank you.
However, the results are curious. For instance, the only “Irish” keyboard character I can find is “£”, and nothing about vowels with acute marks over them. In fact, I’m keying this note while entirely in “Irish” mode. See any difference?
So, I went back into my computer, a Mac with OS X, and looked for other options, but no luck, so far.
Assuming you’re not in Europe (and thus don’t have an “alt GR” key), the easiest way to get fadas is to use alt codes.
Hold down the “alt” key while keying the number sequence (on the number pad, not on the numbers across the top of the keyboard). When you let it up, you will have the appropriate accented vowel:
ALT 0225 = á
ALT 0233 = é
ALT 0237 = í
ALT 0243 = ó
ALT 0250 = ú
ALT 0193 = Á
ALT 0201 = É
ALT 0205 = Í
ALT 0211 = Ó
ALT 0218 = Ú
Well, I tried your suggestion, about the alt key sequence on the number pad, but that didn’t work. Hmm?
So, I then tried using the alt key while simply keying in a vowel, and that not only worked but my keyboard viewer suddenly lit up with an array of new choices!
On the Windows side of things … For years I have used only the US-International keyboard layout, which is capable of handling most Western European diacritics and characters while preserving the familiar US keyboard layout for English.
In its simplist use, it works just the way Cork describes. Hold down Right-Alt and type a vowel to get the acute accented (fáda) version. Other Right-Alt combinations give additional marks and characters. And there are a number of dead-key combinations that are very easy to remember. For example: back-tick plus vowel gives gràvè àccènt; and double-quote plus vowel gives Ümläüt.
Just to clarify … Do you mean you feel no need, or that it doesn’t work on your computer software-wise?
I have a fairly recurring need to write Spanish, French, German, Italian, sometimes Portuguese. So having everything always at your fingertips without memorizing numbers or changing layouts is a big plus for me.
FWIW, the Irish keyboard layout functions almost the same as US-International: Right-Alt plus apostrophe dead key gives fáda. So it’s an easy transition to switch between the two.
The Unicode layout is a superset of Roman, with many more extended Unicode characters for Eastern European, Cyrillic, IPA, transliterations, etc. Any apps that support Unicode should be able to display them.
But for just writing fáda, the Roman layout should more than suffice!
Both, really. Back when I first started needing fadas, I experimented with different keyboard layouts, and had a hard time finding something that was workable (especially as I share this keyboard, and it’s a pain for people to toggle back and forth). Then I got used to using the alt codes, and I use them so easily now (to the point where it took me a while to type them out in this thread…I use them so instinctively, I had to stop and think about the specific combinations of keystrokes), it’s not worth messing with another method. Fortunately, I don’t really need other diacritic marks, so that works well enough for me.
Seeing as I kicked-off this thread with a question, and seeing as I now have much more than I had asked for, I’d like to thank everybody here, THANK YOU!
I’d bet, however, that even a PC spellchecker would go off along with that statement. lol
Not to spam anybody, here, but after my having gone all around the e-world on this now 27 month old Mac computer, it continues to function near flawlessly, and the occasional updates are brief and painless. Go Mac!
However, it seems that the Mac world is waiting for the new OS X version known as “Snow Leopard”, due by this July or so.
