My keyboard itself is French-Canadian. It isn’t a US keyboard layout. I’m using Windows 10 (and OS X on the Mac and Linux Mint on my Dell). Folks at my house need to write in the sole language permissible at work for business (French), which is why it’s Fr-Can by default. You can write in English without any issue on the Fr-Can layout; it just has some quirks.
By layout, I was referring not to the physical keyboard, but to the input language specified in the operating system settings. On Windows: If you’ve set it to US English, then pushing the key to the left of the ‘1’ key should produce a backtick. If you’ve set it to French, then which key or combination you need to push will depend on exactly which layout you’ve selected. If it’s the one titled “Canadian French”, then pushing the key to the left of the Enter key should produce a backtick, though you may need to push it twice, or push spacebar afterwards, because it’s a “dead key”, which is supposed to be used in sequence with another key to produce an accented character. If you’re using “Canadian Multilingual Standard”, however, you’ll need to push Alt Gr + the key to the right of the letter ‘P’, again with the same “dead key” qualifications. Since you say pushing the key to the left of the Enter key produces “è”, you’re probably using “Canadian Multilingual Standard”. The relevant settings are in the control panel, under region & language.
But it all varies depending on OS and version, and requires looking up exactly what you’re using. On a Mac, the settings are probably under System Preferences » Language & Text » Input Sources, where you can examine different keyboard layouts to find particular keys. As for Linux… Even specifying that it’s Mint doesn’t narrow it down sufficiently, due to the level of customization possible with Linux. The location of the relevant settings is going to depend on which desktop environment you’re using, or it might even just be buried in some config file somewhere in /etc.
You are right @Spherix. I think I’ve tracked down the issue… Somewhere between Windows updates and the manufacturer’s updates, some of the keys on my board have been disabled. My Up Arrow key no longer works for example, and the Apostrophe key which ought to give the aigu accent on a,e,i,o,u isn’t reliably producing the expected results. The notebook’s hinge holding up the screen is also busted in half from warping wear in the plastic, keyboard is going rogue… I need to get this computer fixed.
Another, much more round about option is to find the character in Windows’ Character Map and just copy paste it from there. (Windows + R will bring up the Run… dialog, then just type in charmap and hit enter, should bring up the Character Map)
1 Like
@Ozball ok, I admit it, I admit it! When I couldn’t figure out how you created characters in Markdown for the Forum, I went and cobbled them using copy-paste from CharMap!
I’ve also got way too many foreign language alphabets on my system. It turns the Character Map into an adventure whenever I want to find anything.
1 Like
Don’t get me started… I have the East Asian Language pack installed… XD Thankfully they’re usually in their own font, so it’s a tad easier to filter them out.
I used to use charmap for that sort of thing. Lately I just get lazy and Google it. “a with umlaut,” “e with grave,” etc.
4 Likes