Stowaway keyboard

[Diego Cueva]

I´m using the American version of Targus keyboard. There are buttons for all accents:<br> ~ ´`^, etc, but if I try to use them in a letter like e I get this: ^e

[Luciano U. Werner]

On my GoType (for Palm V) I had to use a combination of the alt key and a letter, and then the letter I wanted (alt+n and then a: ã). Hope it works with the Stowaway. Can you guys try it out? Here's a list:<br>Alt+c: ç<br>Alt+e letter: á é í ó ú<br>Alt+i letter: â ê ô<br>Alt+n letter: ã õ<br>Alt+` a: à<br>Alt+9: ª<br>Alt+0: º<br><br>And what about power drain? Does the keyboard flattens the battery?<br>

[Turnip]

I just gave a few of those a whirl on my machine, to no avail. The Alt commands just give me an error beep, and no extended characters afterward. Hopefully you have better luck.

[Luciano U. Werner]

Darn. Can't believe it doesn't support accentuated characters. There has to be some way.

[Diego Cueva]

There´s probably a way. Whats the reason of a tilde button in a keyboard if it doesnt support tildes???

[Matt Keys]

Cant you just find a font that uses accentuated characters?

[Luciano U. Werner]

But doesn't all MS fonts support accentuation? I thought that if the iPAQ supports them, then there must be a way to input them through the keyboard. Could it be necessary (but I don't think so) some kind of patch?

[Luciano U. Werner]

I sended Targus an e-mail asking about this and look what they anwsered:<br><br>Hi -<br> <br>Since the keyboard is limited to English only it does not support accentuated characters.  You will need to use the on screen keyboard on your Ipaq for those characters.<br> <br>If you need any further assistance please let me know.<br>Sincerely, <br>Ronda Calvert <br>Targus Pre-Sales & Customer Service <br>Phone - (877) 482-7487 ext. 201 <br>Fax - (714) 765-5599 <br>mailto:rcalvert@targus.com<br><br>Wonderful, isn't it? Now I'll have a keyboard but I'll still have to tap the screen. Just great. <br>

[TBone]

I'd like to say it's your own fault for being Brazilian, but that's going to play hell with my Spanish too. Damn. I knew it would have problems because WinCE isn't ASCII so the tradition ALT+hex wouldn't work, but that's still a pain.<br><br>So hey, Luciano, there's a programming task for you: write a program that captures certain keystrokes and turns them into accents. I used to have one I wrote called Linguist that would do the same thing, but it was for the desktop and used the taskbar API, so I don't think you could adapt it.

[Matt Keys]

Maybe you could talk to Larry Bank about it, he is usually "up for the task"

[Luciano U. Werner]

Me? Write a program? That would be the day...I can only fix things that bleed red. Programming I'll leave to you guys.<br>So there could be some kind of patch (or program) to fix this problem?

[Luciano U. Werner]

For crying out loud, I only need ã õ é í ó ú à ü. 8 (EIGHT) little characters. Can't believe I'll still need to be medieval and continue tapping on the screen. Damn it.

[TBone]

It would be an interesting challenge. I'll add it to the list of programs I'm thinking of running. As far as I know, the PocketPC Stowaway driver just delivers standard key messages to the various apps, which is why PQ can use it. If you were to create an app that ran without a form (maybe an icon on the Today screen) you could have it sit and listen for various key combinations, catch/replace with accented versions, and pass them on to the OS. That's how Linguist worked, anyway.

[Luciano U. Werner]

Well Thomas, if you manage that you'll be in my gratitude and I'll put you on my Great Heroes List (one spot down from Frank Herbert).<br>:)

[TBone]

Aww, you're kidding me. I mean, yeah, he wrote Dune, but I... I've... never mind.