Cross language Hotkey Question 1

[aussteve]

I was recently asked the following question and have not had great success finding a solution
I have an aquaintance who uses the english language versions on a normal office XP desktop arrangement of both Word and Outlook Express, to write emails in the german language. This is mostly straightforward excepting a couple of the german letters, for example the "umlaut" which resembles a letter with inverted commas above it, and the "sharfes" which looks like a b with the stem extended.
My initial suggestion was to set up a hotkey combo which loads the symbol from the dropdown menu, which worked in word. The curious thing was it will only work in one font, being times new roman, and will not work whilst typing a mail in Outlook Express.....
The task is to set up a hotkey combination that will load these symbols in any chosen font in both programs. As I understand it, it is a feature which is common in Mac systems.
If anyone knows how or if indeed the query is possible then your response will be greatly appreciated, in addition to improving my sleep..........
All the best
Steve

 

[tchatzi]

I think you need something like this

http://www.dirfile.com/autohotkey.htm

You can make any Hot-Key you like for anything you like!
And its freeware.

Good luck

 

[rocksandbroncs]

Hey Steve,

I'm not sure why using Insert>Symbol off the menus didn't work for you. The hotkeys you're looking for are already built in.

For example, the ä character is always Alt-0228 and the Ë character is always created by using Alt-0203. This works for any font (except wingdings, etc.) The sharfes Es character is typed by entering Alt-0223.

These special foreign characters are automatically included in English language fonts used by Windows machines. I used these keystrokes in the above paragraph to generate the umlautted small a and capital E and tested this (I'm using Office 2003) in both Word and Outlook (not Express but I can't imagine there would be a problem with this) and it works fine.

At any rate, you can find more detailed information by visiting on Wikipedia the page about the sharfes Es where it states:

On Windows computers, the ß can be typed by holding Alt, typing either +00DF, 0223, or 225 on the right number pad, and then releasing alt (the latter two depend on the selected input language and on the code page).

and this page about umlautted (word? :-D) characters.



HTH

Please answer back and let me know if I've understood your question correctly.

WARNING! New virus! PBS VIRUS - Your computer stops every few minutes to ask for a tax deductible contribution.

 

[aussteve]

Many thanks for your replies, will have a play and get back to you
Regards
Steve

 

[moontho]

This may help. faq68-2616

 

[aussteve]

My thanks for your replies and apologise for my length of time in replying which has been unavoidable.
I thank moontho for his link and will have a good look.
In the interim i have been playing with autohotkey but cannot seem to make the script work. For example I was trying to assign the Alt and u keys to form the german A with the accent above it, I think the ascii is alt 0228.
This in Autohotkey resulted in the following script:

!u::Alt-0228

When I run this i get a line text error which states that
the line alt 0228 does not contain a recognised action. I tried a few variables with not a lot of luck.
Any comments toward the ongoing saga are heartily welcome!

All the best

Steve