For any wishing to use umlauts, ess-zed, or other European language special characters (except Cyrillic), check out the AllChars software package, at http://allchars.zwolnet.com . It's freeware, small, simple to use. I've been using it myself for at least four years with no problems, on Win98SE, Win NT4, Win2000 and WinXP systems. A side benefit, for those of us with lazy fingers, is the capability to set up keyboard macros -- such as standard phrases in another language, which we always have to look up to know how to spell?
Standard disclaimer -- i have no financial dealings with the author, but as a programmer i appreciate good software.
Tschüß!
Kenneth Thompson
Moline Acres (north StLouis County) MO VSvA
Another option to use for the umlaut problem is to set up your keyboard (for
Windows) to use United States-International. You do this through Control
Panel. For XP go to Control Panel, then Regional and Language Options, click
Language tab, then Details. Then select United States-International.
When setup, one types " followed by the letter to carry the umlaut. Also can
get other foreign characters by typing ' followed by letter or ~ followed by
letter, i.e. é or ñ. For the ess-tset (ß) you still need to use the keypad
(alt+0223). However, you need to remember that if you actually want a " you
must hit the spacebar after unless the following letter does not take an
umlaut. Same is true for the apostrophe or tilde.
I'll go with what you said Barbie, now activate your onscreen keyboard. Put it on top and you can see which key represents whatever you want to type, or you can click the key with your mouse. I activated mine by doing a search on "onscreen keyboard" and it gave me the instructions.
You will get a little keyboard on your tool bar. You can click on it and it lets you select any of the language options you have added, as you described.
