How to type french accents?

fane_j wrote:

When I say, "less than a week" I mean, in toto, about 8 hrs. That's hardly "a lot of retraining".

What is "a lot" depends on the requirements being made of the typist. LexSchellings told you he needed to be able to type German, Dutch, and French all the time. Do you really think a touch-typist in his situation can so easily adjust to qwertz, qwerty, and azerty layouts that the differing key placements are irrelevant? Because that is what it seemed to me that you were telling him.

Tom Gewecke wrote:

You are certainly entitled to your views on that.

Yeah, ain't democracy great?

But I think it is inappropriate to criticize others who may want to be more helpful to a broader range of users than you do by using terms like alt instead of option.

Once again, I beg to differ.

First of all, I am constitutionally opposed to the idea that anyone or anything is beyond criticism.

Second, I think that the best and kindest help given to novices and switchers is to teach them as quickly as possible the ways and customs of the Mac, not to perpetuate ideas and habits acquired elsewhere; just as it behooves them to try to learn the Mac way of doing things. And I speak as someone who not only was a novice himself once, but also as someone who uses both Macs and Windows. In fact, back home, my SOHO consists of 4 PCs and 2 Macs (I'm not counting my old Mac Classic, which I still have, but, sadly, is not working any more. I keep promising myself that, some time soon, when I have time, I'm gonna get myself a long Torx screwdriver and crack open the case to see if I can fix it.)

Third, in this specific instance, I would criticise someone who called the ⌥ key "Alt" even if it were a mere matter of label, because labels do matter. But it's not. On Windows, the Alt modifier can function as a command key (alt-F4 anyone?); on Mac, ⌥, although it can be a modifier of the Command key, is never a command key itself; being, in this respect, similar to AltGr, not Alt. Indeed, it is instructive to check various entries in FOLDOC -- in one, the ⌘ (Command) key is given as the Mac equivalent of Alt, while another states that ⌘ is equivalent to Control (which early Mac keyboards lacked) and ⌥ to Alt. What this demonstrates is that there is no simple Option = Alt equivalence. Alt is Alt and ⌥ is Option and the twain shall meet only when using non-Mac stuff on Macs.

Tom Gewecke wrote:

LexSchellings told you he needed to be able to type German, Dutch, and French all the time. Do you really think a touch-typist in his situation can so easily adjust to qwertz, qwerty, and azerty layouts that the differing key placements are irrelevant? Because that is what it seemed to me that you were telling him.

Yes. Moreover, in his case, I think it would be a mistake to use AZERTY -- why complicate matters? He can type French on the QWERTZ-based Swiss French layout

Oh come on Tom, let's forget about all this: there is Sarah (thx etresoft) who will ramble on and on and be "right" always and contribute nothing else than telling he/she is right...... We have seen such posters from time to time. Those you cannot help. BTW in my world the onle ones that "blind type" are some typists and even maybe one secretary in 100. They can not change really different keyboards without serious retraining. I stop here and will go on in other threads, see you there i hope. BTW you were right of course: Lion is the same as iOS...

I am running Lion 10.7.2 on a Macbook Air and when you hold down the e key a small menu pops up that provides a list of all the accents for e. It's the same for other keys like a, i, o, u etc.

You are correct that is on the MBA+OSLion, like on theiOS on the iPhone/iPad. But the OP is talking about MacBookPro.

OMG, fane you do not read too well: I said on one I have "option" ON the key, and the others have "alt". Ofcourse I know it is the same key. Please read, otherwise go on with your "blind typing".

Je pense que Sarah est quittée il y a quelque mois.

Sarah? Quelle Sarah?!