Re: IIGS question: language specific character support.

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

Pim Blokland <nipp@plane.nl> wrote:

>Supertimer wrote:
>> 
>> If I had a French keyboard, I could use System 6.0.1's
>> keyboard control panel to select this keyboard so that
>> I would no longer have to use option key combinations
>> to get the needed characters.
>
>Not entirely true. On a French keyboard, the keys generate different
>codes than what you would expect from the fonts. I.E. the � key
>generates ASCII 124 rather than 157.
>So if you were to connect a French keyboard to a GS, you would only
>see a "|" when you type the � key. Unless you use a specialized
>French font (that is, non standard ASCII). With all the standard
>fonts (such as Shaston in ROM) you will have to resort to option-`
>plus u.

Interesting.  But what about non-ROM based fonts like Geneva
or Helvetica?  In fact, what if I take the Helvetica font from a
Mac disk and use Pointless to make it available to the IIGS.
If I then plug a French keyboard and select the French keyboard
using the control panel (the graphical one in System 6.0.1 for
the keyboard), wouldn't it work?  I thought that was what the
control panel was supposed to do.

>Oh, by the way, you cannot type *all* foreign characters using the
>normal option key combinations. Try option-` plus U for an uppercase
>�; that won't work. The "Standard" key translation table is
>incomplete. To make a table that has all the combinations, you'll
>need a keyboard translation table editor, such as my own KTEdit.

That's true, but the characters are still available using the
standard table and "non-standard" option key combinations.
You just need to use the video keyboard NDA to find the
right combination.  ;-)