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Archive for the ‘Operating-system’ Category
New keyboard shortcuts for diacritics on LRC Teacher PC
2013/01/23
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- The US international keyboard layout that has come with MS-Windows for many years (though – except in the LRC – not set as default, you need to enable it in the control panel) greatly facilitates typing of characters for most languages that use Roman script with common diacritical marks, but does not cover Pinyin and similar diacritical marks.
- Carly from Carleton, as avid a language teacher as a technologist, had the great idea to extend Microsoft’s US-international keyboard so as to include all the Pinyin tone marks (and other accents useful for linguists). Here is the upshot, extracted from her instructions, but excluding what (either shortcut or (use of common accents within Pinyin is now covered also below) purpose) has not changed from the shortcuts of the non-extended US-international keyboard that used to be the default in the LRC:
-
What you want Which keys you press (before comma is “dead” key = no result until after next key) Example acute accent, pinyin 2nd tone
‘(=apostrophe), vowel
á é í ó ú
grave accent, pinyin 4th tone
`(=grave), vowel
à è ì ò ù
macron accent, pinyin 1st tone
hyphen, vowel
ā ē ī ō ū
pinyin 3rd tone
%(=shift+5), vowel
e.g. ǎ ě ǐ ǒ ǔ
ü with pinyin tones
Accent, double-quote
e.g. ǖ ǘ ǚ ǜ
letter with dot below
; (=shift+period), letter
e.g.
letter with double acute
: (=shift+;) , o or u
ő, ű, Ő, Ű
- We are offering the extended US-international keyboard this as an optional keyboard on the teacher and student PCs with Windows 7.
- To select the new keyboard layout, use the language toolbar, click on 2nd option:
- To explore the new keyboard layout use the Windows On-screen keyboard which will let you peek ahead after your pressed a dead key.
- To bypass a special dead key (= get the normal behavior of the key), press SPACE after it.
Categories: audience-is-teachers, e-languages, English, French, German, Institution-is-University-of-North-Carolina-Charlotte, Italian, Operating-system, Polish, Portuguese, Presenter-Computer, Russian, service-is-applying-learning-tools, service-is-configuring-learning-tools, Spanish, Student-Computers, Swahili, Writing, Yoruba
extended, foreign-language-character-input, ms-windows, pinyin, us-international
Problems with accented characters in Respondus Lockdown Browser
2012/09/11
4 comments
Update: Just click on the menu item “ A” under Respondus titlebar window to bring the floating accents window back. 
Problem is only: this menu disappears now also. Anyhow: using below keyboard shortcuts is faster, and MS FixIT can now enable it for you on your home or office PC also.
Respondus Lockdown browser limits the use of modifier keys (e.g. on Windows CTRL, ALT). This prevents the use of certain traditional keyboard shortcuts for entering foreign language accented characters – including the method from times yore: ALT+number code.
Respondus Lockdown browser can work with a floating toolbar for accented characters. Unfortunately, reports are in that the floating toolbar disappears (may be related to a recent Respondus upgrade?).
Fortunately, Windows US-international keyboard – the default in the LRC – is not as much hampered by Respondus – except in t he few cases where US-international keyboard also relies on ALT- and CTRL-modifier: consult this table.
|
Press (, then release) |
then press |
Example Result |
|
` (accent grave) |
any letter that can have this accent, e.g. “a”, also cedilla ç |
à |
|
‘ (apostrophe) |
á |
|
|
^ (caret)- |
â |
Phonetic Russian character input on US-keyboards with Google IME in the LRC
2012/09/05
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- To write Russian phonetically in Cyrillic:
- Since “input methods”are specific to each window (and automatically switch to that of the window you make active), first open the application you want to write in, preferably MS-Word (has proofing tools for Russian).
- In the language bar on the lower right, click on “EN”, select “Russian” instead
- Click on the keyboard symbol and select “Google”:
- You first may have to right-click on the language bar on the lower right of your desktop and select “Adjust” to show the keyboard symbol:
- You first may have to right-click on the language bar on the lower right of your desktop and select “Adjust” to show the keyboard symbol:
- If you now type in MS-Word Russian (your selection did not “stick” in MS-Word? do the above steps again, eventually it will…) phonetically on a US-keyboard, you will be able to select from suggestions in Cyrillic:
- Click the desired suggestion to have it entered into MS-Word:
- To go back to writing temporarily in English (without changing the entire input method back to English), click the (Cyrillic/Latin) letter symbol on the Google Russian IME menu:
and you can enter English (Latin alphabet) without the popup suggesting you Russian equivalents: 
- To switch from the phonetic input to a floating Cyrillic keyboard,
- click on the keyboard symbol in the Google Russian IME.
- Or from the Language bar, switch to the other (Microsoft) keyboard layout for "Russian" (see #4 above), and go to "Start" / "Run" / type OSK, click "OK".
- click on the keyboard symbol in the Google Russian IME.
Immerse yourself into your language of study by switching the user interface language on LRC PCs
2012/08/17
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- Ever imagine yourself studying or working in an e.g. Spanish– Japanese- or Chinese- speaking country? Then you will likely find yourself in front of a computer display that is in that language – what if you could get a sneak preview before you go?
- You can now switch the interface language of the LRC Windows 7 computers (including Internet Explorer and MS-Office (note that you have to change the editing language separately) to your language of study (How?).
- All non-classical languages studied here are supported:
Language Native name Arabic العربية Chinese (Simplified) 中文(简体) Chinese (Traditional) 中文 (繁體) English English French français German Deutsch Greek Ελληνικά Hebrew עברית Italian italiano Japanese 日本語 Korean 한국어 Polish polski Portuguese (Brazil) Português Portuguese (Portugal) português Russian Русский Spanish español - Some languages, however, come only with the limited support of a MS Language Interface Pack :
-
Hindi हिंदी KiSwahili Kiswahili Persian (Farsi) فارسی Yoruba ede Yorùbá - Below are examples (for German) what you get when you switch the operating system language:
Categories: Arabic, audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, Farsi, French, German, Greek (modern), Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, office-software, Operating-system, Polish, Portuguese, Reading, Russian, Spanish, Student-Computers, Swahili, Yoruba
language-interface-packs, language-packs, windows-7
How to change the display language and speech recognition language on LRC Windows 7 computers (and which languages are available)
2012/08/15
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- UPDATE: Since this page seems to be getting a lot of hits, I want to clarify: The step-by-step guide below only applies after you installed (free) language (or language interface) packs (see list here) on Windows 7 Enterprise or Ultimate SKU (others SKUs cannot add multiple language interfaces). UPDATE2: Things got much easier with Windows 8.
- In order to
- view the GUI of Windows and Internet Explorer in a foreign language,
- use the speech recognition in (a subset of the below) foreign languages,
- and also switch the default language of MS-Office
- Double-click the desktop shortcut “Region and language – Keyboards and languages”.
- Select the desired language from the dropdown box, click “OK”.
- Click: “Log off now”:
- “Log back in” (without restarting).
- And if you want the available display languages in English,
- here are the fully supported (MS Language packs):
Language Native name Arabic العربية Chinese (Simplified) 中文(简体) Chinese (Traditional) 中文 (繁體) English English French français German Deutsch Greek Ελληνικά Hebrew עברית Italian italiano Japanese 日本語 Korean 한국어 Polish polski Portuguese (Brazil) Português Portuguese (Portugal) português Russian Русский Spanish español - and here the partially supported (MS-Language Interface packs):
Hindi हिंदी KiSwahili Kiswahili Persian (Farsi) فارسی Yoruba ede Yorùbá - And here are the languages that support speech recognition:
Categories: Arabic, documentation, e-languages, English, French, German, Greek (modern), Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, office-software, Operating-system, Polish, Portuguese, Reading, Russian, Spanish, Speaking, step-by-step-guides, Uncategorized, web-browsers, Writing
language-interface-packs, language-packs, office-2010, speech-recognition, windows-7
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