For anyone who is having difficulty with French accents on their keyboards I have posted the link to the French Lexibar. This is, in my opinion, by far the easiest way to get the accents into your text.
http://www.lexicool.com/lexibar_french_special_keyboard_characters.asp
Yup, I've spent about 34 years touch typing 'QWERTY' so can not be bothered to relearn. When I first came to France I had a nasty habit of changing the keyboard internally to an English one on French company laptops - then forgetting to change it back when the laptop was handed back in! Oops!
Am impressed at 75 wpm Sheila, I only ever got to 42 although it was on a big old manual Olympus back in 1981.
the italian keyboard was my favourite before going 100% French, the Y is still in the right place compared to a German or Swiss-French ;-)
Swiss French keyboard:
It is as good as any, available from Amazon, etc at zilch prices.
Swiss-French too, my OH uses one.
I was once recommended to get the French-Canadian keyboard. I've never seen one but apparently it's a qwerty with the accent keys added.
Flattery, Sheila :-) another couple of years and I HIT the big 50 :-O
Brian, my ex was German and the german keyboard isn't bad or the swiss one for that matter, the italian is the easiest if you're very qwerty orientated ;-)
I learned to touch type in Berlin! (The course was free), which is a slightly different qwerty in my case but about 40 and a few on top, so French keyboard, no way. I probably know most of the ASCII set between Alt 80 and 172, all of them serve my needs entirely.
Ah yes, Andrew but you have youth on your side. Another couple of years and I'll be staring at the big Six-Oh, which means I have spent roughly 40 years touch typing on a qwerty!
I changed over when I was a (mature) student. It took ages and a lot of determination as I could pretty much touch type too. Writing mostly in French (and occasionally in Italian) it makes it sooo much easier and once you're up to speed it's just as good for English. I do appreciate that it's not easy to begin with, I touch type and when I was in the UK last year I tried to type a quick email... it took me ages and was very very frustrating :-O
Same here, Tracy! Learned to touch type when I was much younger, and have a speed of about 75-80 wpm. Have French computer Andrew and French keyboard, but have plugged in the keyboard I brought from Ireland. I know most of the common ones off by heart and that is much quicker, when I have to write to someone in French, than unplugging Irish keyboard and plugging in French one. So not a cauchemar for moi!
Not practical when you touch type! My laptop now has some of the most common accented letters on it anyway - complement them with ASCII which I know by heart (the few I need that is)
quel cauchemar ! Buy a french keyboard (under 10€) and set the keyboard setting to FR. Or better still, buy a french computer, I'm on my 4th...!
The ASCII table is this:
Just so that you can print it off if needed. Much like Sheila's.
Don't know if this is of any help, but am posting it here for what it's worth. If anyone spots any errors, please let me know. I made up this list ages ago and have a print-out on the wall beside my desk.
Hold down Alt and type
0192 = À
0193 = Á
0194 = Â
0196 = Ä
0224 = à
0225 = á
0226 = â
0228 = ä
0199 = Ç
0231 = ç
0200 = È
0201 = É
0202 = Ê
0203 = Ë
0232 + è
0233 = é
0234 = ê
0235 = ë
0190 = ¾
0189 = ½
0188 = ¼
0204 = Ì
0205 = Í
0206 = Î
0207 = Ï
0236 = ì
0237 = í
0238 = î
0239 = ï
0210 = Ò
0211 = Ó
0212 = Ô
0214 = Ö
0242 = ò
0243 = ó
0244 = ô
0217 = Ù
0218 = Ú
0219 = Û
0249 = ù
0250 = ú
0251 = û
Me too, Brian, except on the Galaxy Note where I can switch between English and French keyboards simply by sliding the space bar left or right.
I have learned ASCII codes so that Alt 130 is é and Alt 138 is è, etc. I not only have French but also German, Spanish and other languages with accents and rather than swapping keyboards find that ASCII Multilingual (Latin 1) code set is easy enough to learn and does it all.
Or you could just buy a French keyboard......
I have Character Map on my tool bar [Widows] . Somewhat tedious finding things for the first time, if they’re not in a run of alphabetical characters. Slightly clunky to use - ‘select/copy/paste’. But easy enough. Though I never did find the character for musical note ‘flat’.
Should have gone back to Ry Cooder explaining that Wim Wenders "recorded the sound of the desert" for the film ‘Paris, Texas’ “and it was E♭. So we recorded everything [the sound track] in E♭”
7 years later! Are you going for the record Christopher? 
