# Tildes/accents on menu?



## jugen

Dear foreros y foreras, moderators and moderatrices,
Have you investigated the possibility of including a "special characters" menu for those of us who are culturally deprived of such on our keyboards?  I am a new member and my only solutions are 1. to copy characters from others' messages, or 2. to write my post on a Word doc and paste it in (which is unsightly). My work email has this feature.
Regards,
jugen


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## cuchuflete

Hi Jugen,
At the top of most of the forums you will find a sticky thread that describes many ways to write accents, whether you use Linux, Mac OS, or Windows.  The stickies also refer you to various external sites that have "special characters" menus you may use in creating posts for these forums.  

You probably have lots more solutions available than you think you have.    Given the wide variety of accent writing tools already available on most computers, and on the web, there's not too much point in reinventing those wheels.

There is a sticky at the top of the menu page for this forum, and detailed instructions and links here:


http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=20801


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## jugen

Thanks, Cuchuflete (great nom de plume!)
I'll look into these possibilities.
Best,
J.


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## serg79_

I think it could be a good idea, because if you're using a public computer then you might not be able to change the language configuration, etc (even temporarily), and trying to write a message while continuously copying and pasting characters or using multiple key combinations can be very tedious and time consuming.
On the other hand, given the amount of different languages covered in the forums, you'd possibly need have to have a special characters menu for each one, which I imagine would be pretty complicated and time consuming to implement, but I still like the idea.


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## cuchuflete

Hi Serg,
If you have internet access from a public computer, then you can get to existing resources, such as these:


Czech
French
German
IPA (English)
Italian
Polish
Portuguese
Spanish

The author of these utilities claims that they work for PCs.  I've tested them on the Mac, and they work fine there also.


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## jugen

Great idea, Cuchu!
j


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## serg79_

Thanks cuchuflete, I didn't know about those.
I don't usually use a public computer to connect but I'm sure those links will be useful for a lot of people.


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## cuchuflete

These tools, and many others, are mentioned in the sticky threads about accents posted throughout WR.  I'm glad you folks find them helpful.  When you find other writing and proofing tools that might me of use to the community, please post them in Comments and Suggestions, and we can add them to the stickies.


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