How to type a macron over a consonant?

Question

How to type a macron over a consonant?

I need to type in the Motu language, which has two distinct 'g's, and in their orthography, one of them is represented by 'g' with a macron over it.

How can I type a macron over a consonant repeatedly, without constantly bringing up the Emoji & Symbols menu? Note, I did create a shortcut in Settings/Keyboard, but that ONLY works if I employ my shortcut at the beginning of a word. Annoyingly, it will not work if I use my shortcut anywhere else in the word. To do so, I have to type the word in pieces, with the shortcut beginning each piece, then backspace the pieces to join them up. This is not my idea of a shortcut. I want to be able to quickly type the 'macron g' anywhere I want. Surely this is possible?

I operate a Macbook Pro, OS High Sierra Version 10.13.6

Thanks for your help.

MacBook Air 11", OS X 10.11

Posted on Apr 4, 2020 8:14 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

118,406 points

Apr 4, 2020 8:40 AM in response to Tomasflamenco

Go to system preferences/keyboard/input sources and activate the ABC Extended keyboard, then select that in the "flag" menu at the top right of the screen. ḡ is made via option a, then g.

https://sites.psu.edu/symbolcodes/mac/codemacext/

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Answer 2

Apr 4, 2020 9:02 AM in response to Tomasflamenco

Tomasflamenco wrote:

Tom, would you also know the steps to achieve this on a PC...

Quick duckduckgo web search for macron windows finds:

https://superuser.com/questions/376020/is-it-possible-to-enter-macron-ā-and-caron-ǎ-diacritics-with-usa-internation#376038

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Answer 3

Apr 4, 2020 9:10 AM in response to MrHoffman

Thanks MrHoffman, I had a look at the link, but it seems only to give instructions on getting a macron over vowels. I note also that one would need to press Alt+four numbers to achieve this each time. That might slow things down when typing a discourse as the 'ḡ' occurs very frequently in the Motu language.

Thank you for your help anyway :)

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Answer 4

Apr 4, 2020 9:15 AM in response to Tomasflamenco

Enter the character codes, as described there. Or here:

http://www.personal.psu.edu/ejp10/psu/gotunicode/macron.html

Unicode is weird and funky and corner cases galore, but both Windows and macOS can enter it.

Alas, iOS and iPadOS need a different keyboard for entering Unicode directly.

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Answer 5

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

118,406 points

Apr 4, 2020 9:33 AM in response to Tomasflamenco

Tomasflamenco wrote:

Tom, would you also know the steps to achieve this on a PC, so I can advise my friends who don't own a Mac?

There may be a custom layout out there which you can download which lets you add macrons to consonants, I will have a look.

Check out Keyman

https://keyman.com

One tool for making such layouts is

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/823010/the-microsoft-keyboard-layout-creator

Otherwise I'd suggest making a windows text replacement entry for ḡ, or for the combining macron character U+0304, which you would entry right after g.

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