Tips & Opinions

Special characters

insert-special-characterDo you struggle with your US keyboard in a vain attempt to type something in those “exotic tongues” such as:

  • German
  • French
  • Norwegian
  • Swedish
  • Polish

Do you find your ability to enter ß, ö, ä, ü, ø, etc. hampered?  Well, I have stumbled on a few options that might help you out.  Granted these work better with *nix based operating systems (Linux, Unix, Mac OS) than Windows but within these options you should be able to find, at least, one helpful approach/ tool.

If you are seeking a “Desktop-wide’ solution, you can easily map a “compose” key to accomplish this function across your laptop/desktop (not all keyboards actually have one).  I ‘personally’ mapped Caps Lock to be my newly defined “compose” key and then from anywhere on my Linux PC I simply use it (no add-on or plugin required).  Additional benefits include the fact that my annoying Caps Lock now no longer sends everything into ‘Caps-land’ when I accidentally hit it!

For a complete list of Compose ‘options’  follow this link!

If you want to accomplish this feat of magic on your platform here are some detailed instructions/ guides:

If you would rather limit your options to a browser (not the entire Desktop), the following will work for two of the major browsers (there may be others out there for IE and Safari, as well). There add-ons/ plugins available called:

  • “Tajpu” on Firefox/ Mozilla
  • “Special Characters” on Chrome

ManyRoads Creator, Professional Genealogist, Family Historian, ManyRoads Podcast co-host, Old Guy and most importantly 'opa'