Hotkeys for subscript & superscript

The keyboards described by wikipedia are for "the other world" so, at least two modifier keys are swapped.

That is correct. Sometimes there are even differences between Mac and PC keyboards/layouts regarding the character keys. For example, the Mac British layout has @ at Shift + 2, while the PC uses this for " (plus a few other things). The variety of keyboards/layouts available for Spanish and Portuguese can be quite confusing:

http://homepage.mac.com/thgewecke/spanishlayouts.jpg
http://homepage.mac.com/thgewecke/portlayouts.jpg

The variety of keyboards/layouts available for Spanish and Portuguese can be quite confusing:

This is why I gave a link to the page where Apple describes its own keyboards 😉

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE vendredi 17 octobre 2008 17:52:31)

Henrik Holmegaard wrote:

I /still/ think a German keyboard ought to have certain extra keys with umlauts on them!

I think that a US keyboard and UK keyboard should have separate keys for stroke of i and the dot above, and for the stroke of j and the dot above.

That sounds like a good idea to me, too. That, and a forward quotation mark and a backward quotation mark.

Anglo-American users are accustomed to a writing system that does not define 'dotting' as part and parcel of the letterform.

Some Americans forget to cross their t's, too.

German is rich in vowels, as are other Germanic languages including Danish, Icelandic, Færoese, Norwegian and Swedish. The 'dotting' is there because the 'dotted letters' are not letters plus dots, but letters in their own right. Input methods should not be monolingual with modifications for multilinguals. Rather, input methods should be multilingual from the ground up so multilinguals do not have to struggle. The EU is officially multilingual, the US is unofficially monolingual (i.e. there is no official language at Federal level in the US while in the EU there are official writing systems and private citizens as much as Members of the European Parliament are entitled, and encouraged, to use their official writing systems and official languages).

Using Pages '08, how do I turn the first quotation mark upside down, so it leads a quote, like in German? Pointed the right way? Uh, do I really have to use that Unicode lookup table? Wouldn't it be easier - in the long run, anyway - to buyi a German keyboard that does it right, the first time?

You can set Pages to do "Smart Quotes" for you in:

+Pages > Preferences > Auto-Correction Preferences > Use smart quotes+

The Mac has always had a very sensible and easy to remember method of typing the non-English punctuation and characters.

eg The Spanish question mark ¿ is simply the English question mark with the option key held down.

As to the German dropped first quote mark, isn't this taken care of by simply selecting the German keyboard in +System Preferences > International+ ?

Using Pages '08, how do I turn the first quotation mark upside down, so it leads a quote, like in German?

Isn't that Option/Alt + Shift + w? „

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglequotes#German_andAustrian

That's useful to know Tom.

Does the German keyboard do this for you automatically if you have Smart Quotes on?

Does the German keyboard do this for you automatically if you have Smart Quotes on?

No, smart quotes is an app function. Using a different keyboard will not change anything. But running Pages in German will do the trick.

Tom Gewecke wrote:

Using Pages '08, how do I turn the first quotation mark upside down, so it leads a quote, like in German?

Isn't that Option/Alt + Shift + w? „

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglequotes#German_andAustrian

Thanks, that was very helpful!

Yes it does.


As far as I know, it's the unique localized version with pre-installed local smart quotes.

Happily, it's quite easy to install an approximation of localization.

Open
<startupDisk>:Applications:iWork
'08:Pages.app:Contents:Frameworks:SFWordProcessing.framework:Versions:A:
Resources:French.lproj:AutoCorrect.plist

with "Property List Editor" or with
"Pref Setter" ( http://www.nightproductions.net/prefsetter.html)

Edit the «sibling» named: «smartQuotesString»

In the French version, the original string is:

'‘’"“”
replace the late two characters: offending curly quotes by our 'chevrons'

'‘’"«»

Save the file.

After that the Smart Quotes feature will replace automatically the straight double quotes by our chevrons.


As you may check, here the title of the preferences checkbox is not adjusted to match the change introduced by my patch. The string is defined in:
<StartupVolume>:Applications:iWork '08:Pages.app:Contents:Resources:French.lproj:SLPreferencePaneAutoCorrect.nib:k eyedobjects.nib.
which is not editable (or at least, I'm unable to open it).



Given the used algorithm, we can't match the true French (of France) needs which require a space after the opening double quote and a space before the closing double quote.

Of course a request was sent to Apple.
If the author of Bean is able to offer a correct Smart Quotes function I assumes that Apple developers are able to do at least the same.

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE samedi 18 octobre 2008 11:16:48)

Here is a script automating the process for those afraid to enter the plist file.

--\[SCRIPT smartQuotes2chevrons]
(*
Run it to install the French Chevrons as iWork '08 smart quotes.

Yvan KOENIG (Vallauris, FRANCE)
18 octobre 2008
*)

--=====

on run
my main()
end run

--===== Handlers

on main()
set dossier_plist1 to (path to applications folder as text) & "iWork '08:"
set dossier_plist2 to ".app:Contents:Frameworks:SFWordProcessing.framework:Versions:A:Resources:Frenc h.lproj:"
set nom_plist to "AutoCorrect.plist"

repeat with a in {"Keynote", "Numbers", "Pages"}
my backupFile(dossier_plist1 & a & dossier_plist2, nom_plist)
my touchPlist(dossier_plist1 & a & dossier_plist2, nom_plist)
end repeat
end main

--=====

on touchPlist(d, n)
local plistRec, xx, quotes
tell application "System Events"
set plistRec to (value of property list file (d & n))
try
set xx to |smartQuotesString| of plistRec
on error (* *)
if (do shell script "defaults read 'Apple Global Domain' AppleLocale") starts with "fr_" then
error "La ressource |smartQuotesString| est introuvable !"
else
error "The resource |smartQuotesString| is unavailable !"
end if
end try
set quotes to "«»"
if text -2 thru -1 of xx is not quotes then
set |smartQuotesString| of plistRec to (text 1 thru -3 of xx & quotes)
set value of property list file (d & n) to plistRec
end if
end tell -- System Events
end touchPlist

--=====

on backupFile(d, n)
local n2, dup
set n2 to "backup_" & n
tell application "Finder"
if not (exists file (d & n2)) then
set dup to duplicate (d & n as alias) to folder d
set name of dup to n2
end if
end tell -- Finder
end backupFile

--=====

--[/SCRIPT]

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE samedi 18 octobre 2008 16:09:50)

Can you suggest a way of moving the Caps Lock key to another part of the keyboard? Like F15, on the other side of the keyboard?

If the point is to disable it, then just go to system prefs/keyboard and mouse/keyboard and hit the modifier keys button and set it to "no action".