I can read & write a language that I don't have a keyboard for (I use a standard US 101 key layout), so I work around this by cut & pasting single characters around to fix up the missing accent characters. Usually even a partially fixed word is enough for the spell checker to kick in and correct the rest, making this surprisingly fast.
The thing that annoyed me recently is that if I cut & paste a single character in Google Mail, it'll "helpfully" surround it with spaces when pasted. Other applications like Firefox or MS Word don't have this behaviour.
I just tested it, and the GMail behaviour is wonderfully inconsistent:
Copying from GMail to to plain text (e.g.: a text editor) will result in a single character.
Copying from plain text into GMail will result in no superfluous spaces.
Copying from GMail to GMail or to any "rich text" editor will add the extra spaces.
So basically I'm copying plain-text, but GMail is abusing rich-text formatting to add "magic" behaviour someone at Google assumed is beneficial, but is just confusing and arbitrary.
PS: Similarly, GMail's spell checker now "fights" with the Firefox spellchecker and the result is that neither wins and obvious typos aren't resolved unless I turn checking off and back on a couple of times.
> I work around this by cut & pasting single characters around to fix up the missing accent characters.
Let me save you some time in the future. You did not identify the OS and language/script you have trouble with, so my answer has to be kinda generic.
First have a look whether your OS keyboard settings or a third party provides an en_US-101 compatible logical layout that adds more accented characters (typically accessed with right Alt¹) or extra modifier keys² (in addition to acute, grave, tilde), then install it and memorise the characters you need. Oftentimes, this is easy because it's mnemonic, e.g.
AltGr+l → ł
AltGr+d → ð
AltGr+o → ø
dead_tilde N → Ñ
dead_double_acute o → ő
dead_circumflex dead_hook O → Ổ
If that's not sufficient or too cumbersome, look into compose key³. That system is user extensible, more powerful because it provides not just accented characters, and to the most part has better mnemonics; e.g.:
compose U G → Ğ
compose " y → ÿ
compose a e → æ
compose t , → ț
compose v z → ž
compose I . → İ
compose u o → ů
compose c | → ¢
compose . . → …
It seems strange that compose u o → ů is u-with-circle-on-top, but compose U G → Ğ is G-with-u-on-top, since it means it's sometimes modifier-first and sometimes base-first.
(FWIW I use the compose key! Just not those particular characters, my set is incidentally consistent :-))
Whoa, thanks! I've used the compose key for a long time (I'm an amateur Polish speaker who also occasionally writes French) and I never realized it was order-insensitive!
My bet is that there simply is no standard for anyone to adhere to at Google. It's a rather granular and specific artifact of UI, in a company not necessarily known for it's UI prowess or consistency, at least along that vector.
I'm wondering if some of these issues could be resolved with some solid industry standards.
You’d think “when a user selects text and runs the copy command, that text should be written to the user’s clipboard” would be a solid enough industry standard.
The thing that annoyed me recently is that if I cut & paste a single character in Google Mail, it'll "helpfully" surround it with spaces when pasted. Other applications like Firefox or MS Word don't have this behaviour.
I just tested it, and the GMail behaviour is wonderfully inconsistent:
Copying from GMail to to plain text (e.g.: a text editor) will result in a single character.
Copying from plain text into GMail will result in no superfluous spaces.
Copying from GMail to GMail or to any "rich text" editor will add the extra spaces.
So basically I'm copying plain-text, but GMail is abusing rich-text formatting to add "magic" behaviour someone at Google assumed is beneficial, but is just confusing and arbitrary.
PS: Similarly, GMail's spell checker now "fights" with the Firefox spellchecker and the result is that neither wins and obvious typos aren't resolved unless I turn checking off and back on a couple of times.