Insert character with umlaut/accent

Question

How do you insert a character with an accent or umlaut into Appleworks 6? This may seem like a basic question, but I can't find it in any of the drop-down menus or the 'help' section. I particularly need German characters, such as 'ö' and 'ß' (both of which I copy/pasted there, but don't want to have to do that every time!). I am used to using OpenOffice or Microsoft Word.

Answer 1

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
Inserting umlaut/accented characters is fairly straightforward; it requires an [Opt]+[key] (=press [Opt] and hit [key] while holding [Opt]), which then either produces a character of its own or modifies the immediately following key.
Some examples of such non-english characters:
- [Opt]+[s] = ß, [Opt]+[d]=ð, [Shift][Opt][k] = , etc.
Some examples of accenting:
- [Opt]+[`] followed by [key] tries to put a down-stroke accent on [key]
Ex.: [Opt]+[`][a] = à,
- [Opt]+[n] [key] tries to put a tilde on the letter [key]
Ex.: [Opt]-[n][o] = õ,
- [Opt]+[e][key] triesd to put an up-stroke accent on [key]
Ex.: [Opt]+[e][e] = é
But, instead of me trying to give you a complete listing, see if you have a little "Stars-and-stripes" icon in the right portion of your menu bar. (If not, select "System Preferences..." from the "" menu item on the far left; in its window, click on the "International" icon, and then on the "Input Menu" tab; check the "Keyboard Viewer" if it isn't already checked; close the "System Preferences" window.)
Select the "Show Keyboard Viewer" from the "Stars-and-Stripes" menu in the right portion of your menu bar, and you'll get a "live" guide to your keyboard. As you press modifier keys, the keys in the viewer change to their correspondingly modified (extended) function. So, pressing [Opt] highlights a couple of keys: these are extended modifier keys: [Opt] makes [e] into the highlighted [’] key, indicating that it attempts to put the [’]-like accent on the following letter.
Only those combinations work that exist in the font you are using; For example [Opt]+[e][s] produces "´s" since there is no [’]-accented [s] in most fonts.
This system has been with the Macintosh OS's since their inception---certainly as long as I remember it.
If you have checked, "Hungarian" in the "International/Input Menu" system preference, and then selected that in the "Stars-and-Stripes" menu as your mode of entry, the flag changes into the Hungarian flag, and your keys will produce symbols according to the Hungarian layout, regardless of what the imprint on the actual keys says. The Keyboard Viewer, of course, tells you which key does what now. Since you ask about "ß" ([Opt]+[s]) and "ö" ([Opt]+[ u] [o]), which occur in German, you may want to switch to the German keyboard layout. Of course, some keys will no longer do what their imprint says, but the "Keyboard Viewer" can always remind you of their "German" function.
Alas! The more recent, and far more capable method using UNICODE (accessible by checking the "U.S. Extended" = "Stars-and-Stripes" with a little "U" option in the "International/Input Menu" system preferences, and then selecting the "U.S. Extended" mode of input from the "Stars-and-Stripes" menu) is not supported by AppleWorks 6.2.9: it crashes if you type anything into any of the AppleWorks' modules. And, since Apple is now developing "iWork" and "iLife", AppleWorks will probably never accept UNICODE.
Hope this helps, Tristan
G4 PowerBook   Mac OS X (10.4.5)