inserting accented characters

[Bernard Devlin]

[apologies if this appears twice on the list - I'm still a bit confused about
my membership of this list]

I would like to make it as easy for users to insert accented characters.

I know that in word-processing apps there are key combinations (e.g. "control+,
(pause) c" ) in Wordpad. Some of my users are quite accustomed to this.
However this does not appear to work in a Rev field.

Do I need a series of handlers that will intercept these keyboard combinations
and insert the appropriate characters? Or is there a setting in Rev that will
enable these combinations for a specific OS?

If this is feasible, I can imagine augmenting this with a scrollable palette of
buttons (the labels of which are generated from a user-modifiable list of
accented characters) that would insert the appropriate character into a field.
However, I can imagine a problem with the palette knowing which field should
receive the character - I take it if the user has clicked in a field that this
can direct the output of the palette button.

Does this seem like the right way to go? Will the introduction of Unicode in
Rev 2.0 make all of this unnecesssary?

[Signe Marie Sanne]

Post by Bernard Devlin
[apologies if this appears twice on the list - I'm still a bit confused about
my membership of this list]
I would like to make it as easy for users to insert accented characters.
I know that in word-processing apps there are key combinations (e.g. "control+,
(pause) c" ) in Wordpad. Some of my users are quite accustomed to this.

However this does not appear to work in a Rev field.

Post by Bernard Devlin
Do I need a series of handlers that will intercept these keyboard combinations
and insert the appropriate characters? Or is there a setting in Rev that will
enable these combinations for a specific OS?
If this is feasible, I can imagine augmenting this with a scrollable palette of
buttons (the labels of which are generated from a user-modifiable list of
accented characters) that would insert the appropriate character into a field.
However, I can imagine a problem with the palette knowing which field should
receive the character - I take it if the user has clicked in a field that this
can direct the output of the palette button.
Does this seem like the right way to go? Will the introduction of Unicode in
Rev 2.0 make all of this unnecesssary?

It is indeed possible to type accented letters in a field. You just
click the accent key or umlaut or whatever first. Nothing is then
seen in the field, thereafter you type the letter and voilà, the
accented letter is there.

Accented letters are kept in text, as name of controls across
platform, no problem. However, if you want to insert text with
accented letters into a field by scripting, you have to take care
when you change platform, either you have to use htmlText or MacToISO
/ ISOtoMac.

[Bernard Devlin]

Signe

Thanks for replying. However, I'm a bit confused by your reply. Does this

Post by Signe Marie Sanne
You just
click the accent key or umlaut or whatever first. Nothing is then
seen in the field, thereafter you type the letter and voilà, the
accented letter is there.

Or is there some representation of accents in Rev that I am missing?

I know that if I create accented characters in Wordpad and then paste them into
a Rev field, they retain the accents. I'm just curious as to the best way to go
about doing this.

[Signe Marie Sanne]

Post by Bernard Devlin
Signe
Thanks for replying. However, I'm a bit confused by your reply. Does this

I'm still not sure I understand you; wasn't your aim to let users
type text included accented letters into a field? This was what I
replied to, ie. how a user type the accented letters. -I have
students in French, Italian, Spanish, German, Norwegian typing
various accented letters into a field. A small instruction text
available on demand on each screen explains how to type, and in my
experience they learn it very quickly.

Perhaps the misunderstanding relates to "accented letters" which I
have interpreted as letters with accent aigu, umlaut etc. If you were
thinking of other unusual letters such as ç (c cédille), ¦ (o+e), the
Scandinavian æ, ø, å etc. (I do not know if these letters come across
in this posting since I'm on a Mac), the situation is different. In
that case it is convenient to have the letters present on the screen,
either in a specific field or as name/label of buttons. When a letter
is chosen (clicked on), just let your scripting take care of
inserting it after the last character of the field.

If you prefer a text field you put the following script into the
field (which is locked):
on mouseUp
put the clickText after fld fieldname
end mouseUp

If you use buttons:
on mouseUp
put the short name of the target -- or: put the label of the
target-- after fld fieldname
end mouseUp

If you want to make use of a palette, you can place the text or the
buttons on it, but there is no need for a palette. I usually have a
button on a screen labeled "How to type" or similar. When clicked, a
field appears with the appropriate help.

[Bernard Devlin]

Post by Signe Marie Sanne
A small instruction text
available on demand on each screen explains how to type, and in my
experience they learn it very quickly.

Do you mean that the instructions are like "type 'control+c (pause) ,' "?
I've tried with a few characters, and whilst they work in Wordpad and put
the appropriate accents onto the letter (e.g. works with ` ^ and the cedilla).

I cannot see that Rev on Win32 (natively) responds to the keyboard combinations
that other apps recognize. Maybe the situation is different on the Mac.

I want to provide a system that's user-extensible. I've really no idea which
words from which languages they might want to use.

Provided that I'm not missing something with regard to the native capabilities
of Rev in handling 'international' characters, I don't mind developing my own
implementation.

[Signe Marie Sanne]

Post by Bernard Devlin

Post by Signe Marie Sanne
A small instruction text
available on demand on each screen explains how to type, and in my
experience they learn it very quickly.

Do you mean that the instructions are like "type 'control+c (pause) ,' "?
I've tried with a few characters, and whilst they work in Wordpad and put
the appropriate accents onto the letter (e.g. works with ` ^ and the cedilla).
I cannot see that Rev on Win32 (natively) responds to the keyboard combinations
that other apps recognize. Maybe the situation is different on the Mac.

I have used this on Windows with MetaCard, and tried it out with
Revolution on Mac. There is no reason why it should not work in Rev
on Windows since Rev is based on MetaCard.

So: As far as accented letters go the instructions to users are (on
Windows). Note. The I-beam has to be visible in the field.

Accent aigu: (é) Hold down AltGr and press the accent key.
Nothing appears in the field.
Type the letter (in this case 'e'). Both letter and
accent appear.

Accent grave (è) Hold down Shift and press the accent key.
Nothing appears in the field.
Type the letter (in this case 'e'). Both letter and
accent appear.

Umlaut (ä) Press the umlaut/circonflexe-key. Nothing appears in the field.
Type the letter (in this case 'a'). Both letter and
umlaut appear.

Circonflexe (â) Hold down Shift and press the umlaut/circonflexe-key.
Nothing appears in the field.
Type the letter (in this case 'a'). Both letter and
umlaut appear.


As regards 'tilde' — or specific letters I have written particular
instructions for the students how to find them on our Norwegian
keyboard, on Mac there are combinations of control + alt, whereas on
Windows they may find them with a numeric key. In this case I would
opt for just make them available on the screen and let the user click
on it, then your scripting should put them into the field. I can send
you a list Monday, have to leave now.

Post by Bernard Devlin
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[Manuel Companys]

Post by Bernard Devlin
field should
receive the character - I take it if the user has clicked in a field that
this
can direct the output of the palette button.

Sure i have done this with hyperCard, for exemple

On mouseUp -- a handler in the card
Global whichfield

if the target contains "fld"
Then
Put short name of the target into whichfield
Else
if whichfld ‚ "" -- is not empty
then do "put short name of the target after fld" && whichfield
End mouseUp

[Dan Friedman]

Post by Bernard Devlin
I would like to make it as easy for users to insert accented characters.

I had this same problem... I just put a little popup menu next to the field
(you could also put it in the menubar) that displays the special characters:

Á
À
á
à
-
É
È
é
è
-
Í
Ì
í
ì
-
Ó
Ò
ó
ò
-
Ú
Ù
ú
ù
-
Ñ
Ñ

Then I use this script in the button:

on menuPick theItem
put the id of the selectedField into tFieldID
put word 4 of the selectedChunk into tChunk
put theItem after char tChunk of field id tFieldID
end menuPick


Hope this helps...

Dan

[Bernard Devlin]

Thanks people for helping me :-) It is kind of you to
go into such detail with your recommendations.

However, it does look like there is something odd happening with Rev in my
setup. I have attempted to at least do things the way that Signe does them,
but to no avail.

1. The I beam is in the field.

2. Following the format that Signe has used for Metacard on Win32 does not work
- when I press the 'AltGr' key it opens the Script Editor! When I try the
'circumflex' key followed by 'a', I just get 'a'. Ditto with 'shift'+^ - only
'a' appears.

After reading up on the ways in which Mac OS and Win32 provide different
shortcuts to the insertion of 'international' characters, and the strange
discrepancies between my installation of Rev on Win32 and Signe's experience
with Metacard on Win32, I'm going with the palette idea.

As the issues are more generic now, I'm going to re-post with a new topic. I
have a few problems with this palette idea also,but I think the solutions may be
of wider interest. The mechanism I am working on may be of interest to other
transcripters (beyond the issue of accented characters).

If I can't solve the issues that have arisen with this design decision, I may
revert to using a user-definable menubutton (popup or pulldown).

[Signe Marie Sanne]

Post by Bernard Devlin
Thanks people for helping me :-) It is kind of you to
go into such detail with your recommendations.
However, it does look like there is something odd happening with Rev in my
setup. I have attempted to at least do things the way that Signe does them,
but to no avail.
1. The I beam is in the field.
2. Following the format that Signe has used for Metacard on Win32 does not work
- when I press the 'AltGr' key it opens the Script Editor! When I try the
'circumflex' key followed by 'a', I just get 'a'. Ditto with
'shift'+^ - only
'a' appears.

Without having tested this, I guess this happens in the development
mode. If your stack is to be used as a standalone, I think it will
work.

[Bernard Devlin]

Signe, I thought this was a plausible explanation, so I built a distribution
for Win32 and tried it, but still a Rev app does not trap these key combinations
and translate them into 'international' characters.

I think this is starting to look like a bug.

Post by Signe Marie Sanne

Post by Bernard Devlin
- when I press the 'AltGr' key it opens the Script Editor! When I try the
'circumflex' key followed by 'a', I just get 'a'. Ditto with
'shift'+^ - only
'a' appears.

Without having tested this, I guess this happens in the development
mode. If your stack is to be used as a standalone, I think it will
work.

[Signe Marie Sanne]

Post by Bernard Devlin
Signe, I thought this was a plausible explanation, so I built a distribution
for Win32 and tried it, but still a Rev app does not trap these key combinations
and translate them into 'international' characters.
I think this is starting to look like a bug.

Post by Signe Marie Sanne

Post by Bernard Devlin
- when I press the 'AltGr' key it opens the Script Editor! When I try the
'circumflex' key followed by 'a', I just get 'a'. Ditto with 'shift'+^ - only
'a' appears.

Without having tested this, I guess this happens in the development
mode. If your stack is to be used as a standalone, I think it will
work.

Bernard, I just downloaded Revolution on my Windows 2000, made a
standalone and tested the accented letters. Here on my (Norwegian)
keyboard everything works fine. In development mode there's a
problem with accent aigu (é), since AltGr + accent key opens the
Properties window.

Kevin, what can be done with this? Both French and Spanish make
extensive use of this accent!

[r***@knowledgeworks.plus.com]

Signe. Thank you for going to the trouble of doing that.

I think that this indicates that it is some setting in Windows 2000. Given that one cannot know what the user's settings are (and that as an application developer one probably shouldn't rely on being able to reconfigure these), and given that different OSs use different keyboard-combo shortcuts to display these characters, I think that I am right to go with my character-to-button palette mapping. I want to have a technique that is easy for the user to use and that is cross-platform and that is independent of any settings on the machine on which my app runs.

It also has the benefit that it can be used for other purposes e.g. for applications where users have key phrases that they need to insert often - these could be placed in the list and then generate a selection palette.

Incidentally, I remember earlier on you seemed to think the palette idea was not the way to go. Was this because you thought it important to protect the screen real-estate or because you knew I would run into technical difficulties on transferring the text between stacks? I think I will eventually get round the final technical difficulty I am having. But if not, I will start to look at ways of putting the list of 'international' character on the card itself.

Regards Bernard

I just downloaded Revolution on my Windows 2000, made a

Post by Signe Marie Sanne
standalone and tested the accented letters. Here on my (Norwegian)
keyboard everything works fine. In development mode there's a
problem with accent aigu (é), since AltGr + accent key opens the
Properties window.
Kevin, what can be done with this? Both French and Spanish make
extensive use of this accent!
--
Romansk Institutt tel: [phone]
Oysteins gt. 1
5007 Bergen http://www.hf.uib.no/hfolk/mlab/hjem/default.html
Norway
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[Signe Marie Sanne]

Post by r***@knowledgeworks.plus.com
Signe. Thank you for going to the trouble of doing that.
I think that this indicates that it is some setting in Windows 2000.
Given that one cannot know what the user's settings are (and that as
an application developer one probably shouldn't rely on being able
to reconfigure these), and given that different OSs use different
keyboard-combo shortcuts to display these characters, I think that I
am right to go with my character-to-button palette mapping. I want
to have a technique that is easy for the user to use and that is
cross-platform and that is independent of any settings on the
machine on which my app runs.
It also has the benefit that it can be used for other purposes e.g.
for applications where users have key phrases that they need to
insert often - these could be placed in the list and then generate a
selection palette.
Incidentally, I remember earlier on you seemed to think the palette
idea was not the way to go. Was this because you thought it
important to protect the screen real-estate or because you knew I
would run into technical difficulties on transferring the text
between stacks? I think I will eventually get round the final
technical difficulty I am having. But if not, I will start to look
at ways of putting the list of 'international' character on the card
itself.

Hello again Bernard (I thought you were asleep at this hour? Are you
in Europe?)

You really got me thinking. First of all, what you say about settings
in Windows 2000, I do not think is the case. Will, please, users on
other Window platforms chime in and confirm the use of the accented
letters in standalones? Or is it the English keyboard which creates
the problem, but you do have the two accent keys available?

Only if you are sure the users can not make use of the accent keys,
then I would go for a palette or a specific card. The most user
friendly way would be to have the users click on an accented letter
and let scripting insert it in the text field. But I would use a
palette or a card for the rest of "strange" letters, such as c
cedille, o+e in French, tilde in Spanish.

If you then want to give the user the possibility to "save" key
phrases, I would have made a button "Insert new phrase" or "Insert
new accented letter" (on a card). This would open an Ask window in
which the user writes what he needs, and then your scripting would
add this to the list, or insert a new button or whatever you choose.
Now I think this is getting complicated, so I'll stop here.

[Bernard Devlin]

Hi Signe, I live in the UK - so I'm almost in Europe ;-)

The PC is configured with "English (United Kingdom)" as the input locale.

I've developed the palette (with some help from the kind people here). It
works very satisfactorily, and very similar to your description. If I can get
the final problem ironed out, I will offer it to Runrev as a user contribution.

Regards, Bernard

[Manuel Companys]

Post by Signe Marie Sanne
Bernard, I just downloaded Revolution on my Windows 2000, made a
standalone and tested the accented letters. Here on my (Norwegian)
keyboard everything works fine. In development mode there's a problem
with accent aigu (é), since AltGr + accent key opens the Properties
window.
Kevin, what can be done with this? Both French and Spanish make
extensive use of this accent!

The best bet would be to have an ergonomically designed keuboard
definition. I did this for macOS: a KCHR ressource adapted to the
national keyboard habits (I did this chiefly for the french azerty, but
then I could adapt it very easily to other keyborards). This originated
a new choise with an esperanto flag in the language menu. It made it
possible to type all the accented characters for almost all the latin
alphabet languages, using my 1 byute-per-char fonts.

All the esperanto ĉapelitaj were true one ASCI chars (no use of
0-offset superposition for them); you could type them, both using the
circumflex key, as in french, or the option-<char>.

Now, you can have your custumized keyboard map made by Apple. But the
process is much more boresome and error inducing, than when you could
do it by yourself! Who will give us an equivalent of resEdit?

Manuel

[Richard Gaskin]

Here's what Macintouch calls "an interesting excuse for cancelling Mac
software development" from Cerious Software:

It has been more difficult that you could ever know
to port ThumbsPlus to the Macintosh. Unlike Windows,
applications cause many problems on the Mac side.
For example Quicktime installations totally crash
ThumbsPlus so that the application doesn't even
launch. Also, the cross compiler applications don't
work any longer with new Mac versions. Any new
software install has the ability to take Thumbs to
its knees. Sorry we don't have better news.
We expect to be taking down all Mac info from the
pages in the next few weeks.

<http://www.cerious.com/faq_pcq.shtml#PCQ_mac>

If they were using Rev or MC they'd still be shipping on Mac, and their
Windows effort would cost only a fraction to maintain and enhance.

This got me thinking: Do any of you have a Rev- or MC-based image database
program?

I was tempted to throw one together and send it off to Ric Ford at
Macintouch, but I have my hands full at the moment.

[Ro Nagey]

I have the barest of bones ones...I wouldn't call it a serious app by
any means, just one of those projects to learn MC. If you want I could
send it to you. I just moved it over to the Mac and I can debug it a
bit over the weekend if I get time.

Ro

Post by Richard Gaskin
Here's what Macintouch calls "an interesting excuse for cancelling Mac
It has been more difficult that you could ever know
to port ThumbsPlus to the Macintosh. Unlike Windows,
applications cause many problems on the Mac side.
For example Quicktime installations totally crash
ThumbsPlus so that the application doesn't even
launch. Also, the cross compiler applications don't
work any longer with new Mac versions. Any new
software install has the ability to take Thumbs to
its knees. Sorry we don't have better news.
We expect to be taking down all Mac info from the
pages in the next few weeks.
<http://www.cerious.com/faq_pcq.shtml#PCQ_mac>
If they were using Rev or MC they'd still be shipping on Mac, and their
Windows effort would cost only a fraction to maintain and enhance.
This got me thinking: Do any of you have a Rev- or MC-based image
database
program?
I was tempted to throw one together and send it off to Ric Ford at
Macintouch, but I have my hands full at the moment.
--
Richard Gaskin
Fourth World Media Corporation
Developer of WebMerge 2.1: Publish any database on any site
___________________________________________________________
Tel: [phone] AIM: FourthWorldInc
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