Preview shortcut include an accent

Question

Preview shortcut include an accent

I have an American QWERTY keyboard on my Macbook Air, but MacOS El Capitan installed in French Canadian. All my menus are in French. But some shortcuts are just screwy. For example, in Preview, this menu has shortcuts with É and whatever that

thing is next to "Planche contact". I have no way of typing this on my keyboard. I try all combo with alt-command, and none of them worked. I tried to see the É with the keyboard visualizer but didn't get anywhere.

How do I get those shortcuts to be something I can actually type?

Macbook, Mac OS X (10.5.1), 2.2Ghz core Duo; 1GB memory

Posted on Sep 21, 2016 4:26 PM

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Answer 1

sberman

Level 10

273,996 points

Sep 21, 2016 5:36 PM in response to mathieuonamac

I wish I could show you this in a screen shot, but pressing the "Shift" key changes the image.

Anyway, that "thing next to the Planche contact" can be made to appear as follows:

Go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Input Sources > French > French Numerical

You will see that symbol in the "6" key position, just above and slightly to the left of the "y" key.

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Answer 2

Sep 23, 2016 12:54 PM in response to sberman

I would expect the shortcuts to be something that I can type with my keyboard without having to look at a keyboard map. Running the OS in French Canadian, it might be expected that I have É key, but I have never seen a keyboard with that propeller thing. Maybe they have those in France on the AZERTY layout.

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Answer 3

sberman

Level 10

273,996 points

Sep 23, 2016 2:43 PM in response to mathieuonamac

The symbol you're referring to ("propeller thing") is known as a "Section Sign" and has real meaning - not only in French.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_sign

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Answer 4

Sep 24, 2016 2:28 PM in response to mathieuonamac

So all those shortcuts line up with keys 1 to 6 on Azerty keyboard:

How do I figure tell apps that I don't have an AZERTY keyboard?

@sberman thanks for the info on the section sign.

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Answer 5

sberman

Level 10

273,996 points

Sep 24, 2016 3:04 PM in response to mathieuonamac

System Preferences > Keyboard > Input Sources (then, depending on your setup, you may have to press "+" in the lower left)

The Azerty keyboard is one (or two) of the "French" options:

The QWERTY keyboard is a different French option:

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Answer 6

Sep 24, 2016 7:06 PM in response to sberman

I'm in Montreal, Canada. We speak French, but we use QWERTY keyboards.

My laptop OS is set in "Français (Canada)", the physical keyboard is the american QWERTY keyboard. I get to type accent using the "US International" keyboard, and it works great for me, since all the keys do exactly what is drawn on them.

So, that a piece of software from Apple shows me shortcuts that I need an AZERTY keyboard to use is weird. It might has well show me shortcuts for an Arabic keyboard, it would be equally helpful. I'm not switching to an AZERTY layout just to type a shortcut, it would defeat the entire purpose of a shortcut.

Question 1: is this expected behavior based on my settings?

Question 2: if not, how do I fix it?

Thanks

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Answer 7

sberman

Level 10

273,996 points

Sep 24, 2016 7:29 PM in response to mathieuonamac

I don't really follow your question. It seems to me that now that you know the Section sign is over the "6" key, when you see something with the section sign in it, simply type what's over the "6". Do so with the qwerty keyboard if you wish.

If you don't want to remember the location of the Section sign in the future, go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts and create a shortcut to perform the action you need. Then you would only have to remember the Section sign location for this one shortcut creation.

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Answer 8

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,542 points

Sep 25, 2016 8:08 AM in response to mathieuonamac

mathieuonamac wrote:

Question 1: is this expected behavior based on my settings?

Yes. The shortcuts are determined by the localization of the software. No apple software is localized for Canadian French, just for France French, for which they assume an azerty keyboard. There's no way for an app to somehow change shortcuts on the basis of what keyboard layout is active.

I'll try to post tomorrow about ways to fix things -- perhaps setting up new shortcuts in system prefs/keyboard/shortcuts would help, but I am not sure. The easiest might just be to memorize the equivalents: &=1 "=3 §=6 etc., but I suspect some won't work right.

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Answer 9

Sep 25, 2016 8:34 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

I tried hitting the keys (1,2,3,4,5,6), but they don't work, except for 6, probably because option-6 is §. None of the other ones match my physical keyboard.

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Answer 10

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,542 points

Sep 27, 2016 4:30 PM in response to mathieuonamac

mathieuonamac wrote:

I tried hitting the keys (1,2,3,4,5,6), but they don't work, except for 6, probably because option-6 is §. None of the other ones match my physical keyboard.

For 1 try Shift 7

For 2 try 'e on US international (but probably need to change the shortcut)

For 3 try shift 'space on US international (or just shift ' on US)

For 4 try 'space on US International (or just ' on US)

For 5 try shift 9

For 6 you got it to work already.

Perhaps easier to change the shortcuts you most need.

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Answer 11

Sep 26, 2016 1:39 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

Any idea where I should register this as a bug?

There are at least 5 million people who speak French and use a QWERTY keyboard in Québec. So the fact that apps are not localized to them is a huge pain.

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Answer 12

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,542 points

Sep 26, 2016 3:19 PM in response to mathieuonamac

go to

http://www.apple.com/feedback

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