Using the US-International Keyboard

Windows allows users two different ways to enter accented and other characters used by French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian such as á, ì, ö, ç, and ¿. The best way is to install the US-International keyboard driver found on the original Windows installation diskettes or CD. Here are the instructions for installing the driver:

For computers using Windows 3.x: In the Main program group, double click on the "Control Panel" icon, then on the "International" icon (the one that looks like the earth). Change the keyboard specification to "US-International." It is very likely that you will need the original Windows installation disks if you have not installed this keyboard driver before. If you do not have the original Windows installation disks, when it asks you to insert the diskette, you can also insert a diskette containing the file KBDUSX.DLL copied from the Windows\System directory of a computer that does have the US-International keyboard installed. Once you have specified the new keyboard, accept the settings and leave the "International" window.

For computers using Windows 95: Click on Start, then Settings, then Control Panel. Double click on the "Keyboard" icon, then single click on the "Language" tab, then on the "Properties" button. Click on the arrow next to the indication of the keyboard currently installed. Scroll up or down until you see the US-International keyboard specification and click on it. Then click on OK and accept all specifications until you return to the Control Panel window.

Once the driver has been installed, accessing the accented characters is quite easy because the characters for acute, grave, and circumflex accents and tildes have now been made into "dead" keys. For an accented a (á), for example, just type the apostrophe, then the a. For an è, type the backward apostrophe ` then the e: è. An i with a circumflex is created by typing the circumflex (shift 6: ^) then the i: î. This also works with the double quote (") for the umlaut (dieresis) and the tilde (ñ, ã). Not all combinations are so intuitive.:

A much less elegant way to enter accented characters is to use the old ASCII combinations. You can enter lots of different characters by holding down the Alt key and entering number combinations on the Num pad (make sure NumLock is on). Here are the most common foreign language combinations: