Re: Tools (was: Re: Labelling Vai Keyboards)

Richard Wordingham wrote:

>
> --- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@...> wrote:
> > Doug Ewell wrote:
> > >
> > > Peter T. Daniels <grammatim at worldnet dot att dot net> wrote:
>
> > > > Word for Windows all but forces you to do it for any accented
> letters
> > > > -- that, or memorize a bunch of arbitrary 3-digit codes.
> > >
> > > Go to Word Help
> >
> > WinWord, of course.
> >
> > > and search for "Insert an international character by
> > > using a shortcut key." You might be pleasantly surprised.
> >
> > And if one routinely uses 15 or 20 of them?
>
> If that's all, one defines 15 or 20 shortcuts. I was once writing
> small amounts of Thai that way. I defined about 60 shortcuts for Thai
> - the others characters were rare enough that 'insert symbol' was good
> enough.

But Word itself already uses hundreds of key combinations as shortcuts
(at least in Word for Mac; I haven't yet gone hunting for the WinWord
list). One could end up in an endless loop of trying to avoid changing
the ones one actually uses.

> An alternative method is to use the automatic corrections in the
> autocorruption facility - the part that changes (c) to a copyright
> symbol rather than the part that changes GHz to Ghz. I've seen that
> method recommended by a professional translator.

Hmm, that has possibilities. In Word for Mac, though, the former is a
small group that are turned on and off individually and don't seem to be
individually specifiable (the one that makes _italics_ into italics is
actually useful, when I remember to do it -- presumably it would come
easier to a Spanish-typer who's accustomed to using ¡ and ¿); but why
couldn't they simply be added to the latter? Typing ´e would be replaced
by é. (Then I'll merely have to discover how to type ´ -- I'm still
looking for the en-dash, which generally speaking is far more important
than the accented letters.)
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...