2.6. Special characters
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## 2.6. Special characters

If you use Pauker as a vocabulary trainer for learning other languages, you most probably run into the problem of inserting special characters. Actually, this problem can not be solved by a normal application like Pauker but must be solved by the operating system you are using. Here we present approaches for some known operating systems:

### 2.6.1. GNU/Linux

GNU/Linux is a free operating system with a plethora of desktop environments to choose from. The most commonly used desktop environments on Linux are KDE (http://www.kde.org) and GNOME (http://www.gnome.org).

#### 2.6.1.1. KDE

| Note
This documentation applies to KDE 3.5.8.

You can type all special characters on your own keyboard. Just start the KDE Control Center and go to “Regional & Accessibility → Keyboard Layout”:

Add the layouts of the languages you want to learn and press “Apply”. Now you will find the KDE Keyboard Tool at the KDE Panel (see next figure):

Just click it to switch between your selected keyboard layouts.

If you do not know how your selected keyboard layout actually looks, you may also use a virtual keyboard like xvkbd:

For more information about xvkbd see http://homepage3.nifty.com/tsato/xvkbd

If you do not want to type the special characters on any real or virtual keyboard at all you may also use a character selection tool like KCharSelect:

You then have to “type” your text within KCharSelect, copy it to the clipboard and then paste it to a card side of Pauker.

#### 2.6.1.2. GNOME

| Note
This documentation applies to GNOME 2.20.

If you want to type all the special characters on your keyboard start “System → Preferences → Keyboard”:

Under the “Layouts” tab you may add up to four different keyboard layouts. If you want to be able to fast-switch keyboard layouts you have to right-click the GNOME panel and choose “ Add to Panel... ”. In the following dialog you have to select “Keyboard Indicator”, click “Add” and close the dialog.

A very simple keyboard switcher appears at the GNOME panel:

If you do not know how your selected keyboard layout actually looks, you may also use a virtual keyboard. For more information see above.

If you do not want to type the special characters on any real or virtual keyboard at all you may also use a character selection tool. Start “Applications → Accessories → Character Map”:

You then have to “type” your text within Character Map, copy it and then paste it to a card side of Pauker.

### 2.6.2. OS X

| Note
This documentation applies to OS X 5 Leopard.

To be able to insert special characters on OS X, you need to activate the keyboard menu in the menu bar. You have to start the system settings via the menu entry “Apple → System Preferences...”.

Then you have to choose “International”:

In this window you have to click on the tab “Input Menu”:

There you have to activate “Character Palette”, “Keyboard Viewer” and “Show input menu in menu bar”:

Depending on which languages you need, you can activate languages in the center list of the dialog. When using asian languages (Korean, Japanese, simple and traditional Chinese, Tamil and Vietnamese) OS X offers to choose certain fonts and transscriptions as keyboard settings. For instance, it is possible to choose both Japanese alphabets (Hiragana and Katakana) and two transscriptions (Romanji) separately.

Now you have successfully activated the keyboard menu.

To change the language in the keyboard menu, just select it with a single click. The keyboard input now works as if a keyboard of the selected locale would be connected.

The character palette can be activated via the keyboard menu. Just click on “Show Character Palette”.

With this tool you can insert every character supported by the system. The characters are sorted by category (left hand side) and can be selected on the right hand side. With “Insert” you can insert the characters into a textfield. Above the characters you can change the view, e.g. to easier find asian characters. With a click on “Character info” you can get some generic information and similar characters. Under the point “Font Variation” you can insert the character with another font.

| Note
The character palette offers many configuration options. To explain them all in detail is out of scope of this document. See the OS X online help for more information.

The keyboard viewer can be activated via the keyboard menu. Just click on “Show Keyboard Viewer”.

With the help of the keyboard viewer you can operate the keyboard in the currently selected language setting, even if you do not know the keyboard layout. If you want to insert symbols, you can change the font mapping at the bottom of the window.

### 2.6.3. Windows

| Note
This documentation applies to Windows XP.

Go to “Start → Control Panel → Date, Time, Language, and Regional options → Add other languages”. Click on the button "Details...". Click on the button "Add...". Select your new input language. Click OK, OK and OK. Now you have a language bar at the bottom right corner of the desktop:

There you can switch between your selected input languages.

If you do not know how your selected keyboard layout actually looks, you may also use a virtual keyboard. Go to “Start → All Programs → Accessories → Accessibility → On-Screen Keyboard”:

If you do not want to type the special characters on any real or virtual keyboard at all you may also use the Character Map. Go to “Start → All Programs → Accessories → System Tools → Character Map”:

You then have to “type” your text within Character Map, copy it and then paste it to a card side of Pauker.

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