A serious problem with Mac OS X

Question

Dear Mac Community
Since I bought my first iPod (a 3G), I have been a fan of Apple. For years, I had wanted to make a switch to the Mac. About a month ago, I finally decided it was time to leave the M$ world, and bought a Mini.
My overall experience has been nearly flawless, with no crashes, truly amazing apps that are mac only (like QS, adium, spotlight and the whole iLife bundle, to name a few) and a very good looking interface.
You may've noticed the word "nearly" on the previous paragragh, and it's there for a reason. There is one serious problem I can't solve. I am Brazilian, and therefore, I speak and write mostly in Portuguese. But OS X has no support for the Brazilian layout keyboard. I have been after a solution since day 1 with my Mac, but all I have managed to find out is that there are tons of pages in the web about Portuguese speakers complaining that their keyboards don't work properly. Apparently, this has been an issue since Mac OS 10.0, and until Tiger there isn't a solution for it.
There are many different hacks to try to solve this, and I've tried every one, but they are either buggy, or don't work properly with non-universal apps (including word), or aren't 100% accurate on the keys placement.
The fact is, I write a lot for school, and I need a Brazilian layout keyboard. And my parents, who were also seriously considering switching, work a lot with translations, so it is even more important for them to have the right layout.
I am going to send a complaint for apple regarding this, but I'm skeptical that I'll get a solution, since this has been a known issue for a long time.
Sincerely
Daniel

Answer 1

There is another major problem with the layout I'm currently using which I forgot to say:
- I can type accented letters with almost no problem (á, à, ó, é, etc), except for "è" (e + `), which shows up simply as "e".
"That seems very strange to me. It could be something related to layout id's, which can easily be changed. Let me know if mine works with Word (I assume you are talking about Word2004 rather than the old WordX?)."
I've checked that more carefully, and here's what I've come up with: Word doesn't change the layout to US, it simply stops recognizing the 12th key (the extra one) which is responsible for "/" and "?" (and therefore is fairly important)
btw, I'm using Word 2004
"Thanks. Feel free to email me details and screenshots if you like. Since no one outside Brazil is likely to have the special keyboard with 12 keys on the bottom row, it's somewhat difficult to build and test layouts like this. (tom at bluesky dot org).
Try the one called winbrazabnt73.keylayout, which tries to put in the extra key. "
There is one problem with your layout, which is the fact that no app recognizes the 12th key responsible for "/" and "?" (including Pages, which doesn't have this problem with the other layout I'm using).
On the other hand, your layout manages to type the "è", whereas my other layout doesn't.
In the site you provided above in this thread (
http://m10lmac.blogspot.com/2007/02/fixing-brazilian-keyboard-layout.html), there is an image of different kb layouts available in Windows and OS X. If you could make the Windows Brazilian ABNT and it worked with Word, all my issues would be solved, since that's exactly the layout I'm looking for.
BTW, thanks for all the support
Best regards
Mac Mini 1.83 GHz Core Duo 1 GB Ram 80 GB HDD Mac OS X (10.4.8)