Adding characters to text specifically Spanish ones /

[IanAD]

Apologies if as a newbie I have simply failed to search properly . I  promise I have tried . I have just decided it would be good to be able to produce documents in Spanish . I can't find in the Help files how to add a specific character to the text and using the ALT key  with 164 , when trying to add and n with a tilde on it , produces interesting effects . In this post in didn't appear at all [ in fact it moved me off the page ] and in the text I was experimenting with it appeared to produce a smiley face .

So how do I add characters to text and in particular the n with a tilde on it please ?

TIA IanAD

[David in Яuislip]

In publisher type U+00F1<alt>u and you'll get  ñ
Use the Glyph browser if you don't know the unicode

[lacerto]

On a Windows computer [at least on many European keyboards], the tilde key (~) is typically ”mute”, meaning that it waits for another key input before output, so the plain tilde needs a space character to be produced, and the other glyphs with a tilde attached, a related other character. The Spanish lower and upper case eñe can be produced by pressing the tilde key and then n or N.

If a mute (combining) tilde is not available, the Glyph Browser’s search feature is your best friend. Type there ” n ” (space, n, and space) to get all variants of the letter n displayed:

In the similar manner, you can have other Spanish special characters, the inverted question and exclamation marks, displayed simply by entering in the glyph search box the word "mark" (without quotation marks).

When using a touch keyboard (or soft keyboard where you can input a character with a pointing device or a pen), you can typically produce these special characters also by holding down n/N or ? or ! keys a while and making an alternative selection:

[walt.farrell]

On 11/29/2024 at 10:14 PM, lacerto said:

On a typical Windows computer, the tilde key (~) is typically ”mute”, meaning that it waits for another key input before output,

In my experience, that depends on the keyboard you have specified. The standard US English keyboard does not behave as you describe, but the International English keyboard does. You can have both configured, and switch between them using the Windows Key + Space.

[lacerto]

On 12/9/2024 at 4:51 PM, walt.farrell said:

In my experience, that depends on the keyboard you have specified. The standard US English keyboard does not behave as you describe, but the International English keyboard does. You can have both configured, and switch between them using the Windows Key + Space.

Ok, thanks. On Finnish/Swedish keyboard the mute keys are customarily the tilde, dieresis, circumflex, grave and acute accent (in addition to having å, ä and ö as regular keys), which allow to produce most but not all the Western European special [diacritic] characters (not used in Finnish or Swedish) without needing to switch keyboard language/layout and without needing to type Alt+Num codes, and I wrongly assumed that the same rationale would be applied in e.g. US English keyboard where there is culturally more frequent need for e.g. Spanish special characters.

UPDATE: Additionally, my further notes regarding soft keyboards were specifically related to Windows touch keyboard, not the accessibility feature named On-screen Keyboard (which is a poorly written and much less useful app).

UPDATE2: On Windows 11 (at least), one can select United States-International keyboard layout, which makes mute tilde available (so by pressing the tilde key, a waiting state for the second key is triggered instead of producing directly the tilde). On a regular US keyboard the tilde key is not mute. On macOS (at least latest versions), alternatives for letter n can be produced by holding down e.g. the n key and picking an alternative from a popup menu that shows (for the letter n, eñe would be the first choice).