The Dead Key Scrolls...-... & Julia

[Guest guest]

FYI: You can wiki it under computer keyboard or dead key for further info. Here

is a long " explainable version " of essentially what Linda noted in one sentence.

I don't wish to tie up the post with this, but wanted to relay the info.

 

Dead key

A dead key or key combination does not generate a character when struck, but

modifies the character generated by the key struck immediately after. On some

systems, there is no indication to the user that a dead key has been struck, but

in some text-entry systems the diacritical mark is displayed along with an

indication that the system is waiting for another keystroke: either the base

character to be marked, an additional diacritical mark, or space to produce the

diacritical mark in isolation.

 

Many languages use the Latin alphabet and have diacritically-marked letters for

which unique keys do not exist on all keyboards. For example, on some keyboard

layouts, the acute accent key is a dead key; in this case, striking acute accent

then a results in á. Acute accent followed by space results in an acute accent

in isolate form.

 

Most modern old keyboards conform to the ISO 9995 layout. This layout was first

defined by the user group at AFNOR in 1984 working under the direction of Alain

Souloumiac [1]. Based on this work, a well known ergonomic expert wrote a report

(Yves Neuville, Le clavier bureautique et informatique, Cedic-Natan 1985) which

was adopted at the ISO Berlin meeting in 1985 and became the reference for the

keyboards' layout.

 

In Mac OS X, many keyboard layouts employ dead keys. The U.S. Extended layout

employs dead keys extensively (reached with option and option-shift) allowing a

large inventory of characters to be easily typed. In the U.S. layout, the

following smaller selection of dead keys appears (all reached with simply

option):

 

option-e (á, é, í, ó, ú)

option-` (à, è, ì, ò, ù)

option-u (ä, ë, ï, ö, ü, ÿ)

option-i (â, ê, î, ô, û)

 

 

 

, " iamwaitingmoon "

<iamwaitingmoon wrote:

>

> I think it's merely the character encoding, ASCII/HTML.

>

> -D

>

[Guest guest]

Thank you D-

 

Now it makes sense - funny it never happened until recently - wonder why the

timing now???

 

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