Some of My Favourite Poets and Poems.

[barfle]

Ahh, umlauts! A feature that comes with every Windows operating system I've ever used (clearly not OT's - oh, well), is a program called "Character Map" or "charmap.exe" When it is running, it shows a window with a grid of all possible characters in a font. Note that many fonts don't have all the characters, so this will not always work.

Anyway, that program shows, for example, Ä, ä, Ë, ë, Ï, ï, Ö, ö, Ü, and ü, not to mention ß.

I know the umlauted Is are not part of the German alphabet, but they are available for whatever purpose you might have for them, at least in most common fonts. So how do you get those characters?

Hold down the "Alt" key while you type in the four-digit code on the numeric keypad, not the top row of keys above qwerty... For the heck of it, here's a table for the characters I just posted.

Ä = 0196
ä = 0228
Ë = 0203
ë = 0235
Ï = 0207
ï = 0239
Ö = 0214
ö = 0246
Ü = 0220
ü = 0252
ß = 0223

There are 128 characters with codes from 128 to 255. I would suggest if unusual characters, including the cent sign (¢) and many other symbols that are probably not on your keyboard are important to you, that you create your own chart similar to mine, if you can't find charmap.

[Moonlight]

Dear Barfle,

Thankyou for your kind assistance, I have taken note of the chart you have illustrated.
And I have found 'Character Map', but I will have to experiment with it tomorrow after work.
I am always the last to know these things!

I can speak a little German, but not good enough to translate the poem that I posted.

Once again, I am much obliged for your help.

Regards
Moonlight

<small>[ 12-29-2003, 06:38 PM: Message edited by: Moonlight ]</small>

[barfle]

I'm sure there are several more little tips and quirks and features that I haven't yet discovered, or had pointed out to me.

I remember when I was in high school (yes, they had them in those days), I had a typrwriter that was made in Germany, and the manual was a translation of the original German manual, including the original photos of the German keyboard. It had separate keys for umlauted vowels and the "s-tset" letter. My keyboard didn't have them, and I'm afraid I don't remember what keys had been replaced, but I thought it moderately interesting at the time. BTW, I took two years of German in high school, spent a year there in the Army, and now I've forgotten 90% of it through disuse.