Plantains anyone?

[Tubajug]

How do you get the upside down exclamation point or any other characters needed to write in Spanish?

Hold the "Alt" key and press 0161 on the number pad ¡

To be honest, I just googled how to do it because I couldn't remember the keystroke. I used to know most of the Spanish accents and things on the keyboard when I wrote more in Spanish, but I don't much writing in Spanish anymore.

[Donn]

Hold the "Alt" key and press 0161 on the number pad ¡

Apparently you'd need numlock on, for that to work, by the way. From what I read. It looks to me like this is really the old school way, though, like left over from punch cards. Which may have lasted quite a while on Microsoft platforms, but at this point, it might be worth looking into keyboard reconfiguration options, to bring your setup closer to what you can do on the Apple Macintosh platform for example. ¡Good luck!

[alfredr]

"Hold the "Alt" key and press 0161 on the number pad ¡"

This sounds kind of like what I think I remember doing from back in the days of Window, but as I remember*, it didn't work when that computer had to be replaced with a newer one with a different Window. ¡Que bueno! Funciona con este. Pero faltan muchos caracteres todavia. Es un sistema despacio; tienen que tener algo mejor para las computadoras que constuyen y venden en paises hispanparlantes. Debo preguntarles a mis hijas que se comunican con sus primas, pero de lo que he visto, no muy se usan los caracteres de Espanol. You see, there's where I needed one just now.

*YMMV: your memory may vary; mine certainly does.

[Donn]

Indeed, there is something better. I see this for Vista:

From the Control Panel, select "Clock, Language and Region." Under Regional and Language Options, pick "Change keyboard or other input method." Select the General tab.

Under "Installed Services" click "Add..." Find the United States-International option and select it. In the pull-down menu, select United States-International as the default language. Click OK to exit the menu system and finalize the installation.

The key word is "international". That apparently gets you a keyboard configuration where you type <alt>1 and get ¡ -- just like on the Mac -- and most of the other stuff you need - diacriticals, angle quotes, etc. <alt>n is ñ (unlike the Mac - there, fortunately for Portuguese speakers, that just starts the tilde and then you type whatever character goes with it, so we can just say "não" to Windows.) On this Windows setup you have to use the right alt key, not left.

Honestly my memories of Puerto Rican tostones have grown a little dim after a couple years, but I don't remember them that thin, even as thin as the picture. There could certainly be some variation across the Caribbean. Oddly, as far as I know the Brazilians don't particularly go there at all - they know plantain, but more at its maduros stage - maybe because there's an abundance of land suited to cultivation of rice etc.

[alfredr]

Thanks for information, Donn. I will try to make some time sometime and look into that, although this computer has the seventh Window, not one with a View.

Obviously, there is more than one way to skin a platano. And platano needs an accent mark ' over the first a.

[alfredr]

ñáéíóú Well I got these, but the upside down exclamation point and the upside down question mark don't work that simply. ¡ is still {alt0161} and the upside down ? is still lost to me. plátano. Lo encontré. ¡Ay caramba! Yo quiero Taco Bell.

Gracias Donn.

¿¡ Y tienes razón. Solo funciona con la tecla 'alt' derecha. And apparently the apostrophe key also works differently. It can be used before typing the letter you want to use it over and to get just an apostrophe, you have to type a space after hitting ' . ñ That kind of thing works with the ~ also to put it over the n only apparently.

[Donn]

Que bueno. Eu não sabia do á em plátano - plátano existe in Portugues mas de sentido differente - Plane Tree, as in London Plane or more specifically a parent of that tree, crossed with sycamore. You'd have to be very hungry to try to eat any part of it. Cooking plantain is banana-da-terra.

[alfredr]

Planatus acerifolia off the top of my head. American(?) sycamore. It might be that I have seen platano translated as planetree form Spanish, That's another of those YMMV cases. I'm on the laptop which has not developed enough character to do the accent on the a in platano.

But how did you get the ã? I tried to do it out of curiousity, but it didn't work for me. (I copied and pasted that) I don't think I have any need for it as I don't write Portuguese, but I'm curious.

[Donn]

But how did you get the ã?

I use an Apple Macintosh, where the standard keyboard configuration is already fairly international. I mentioned before, on this configuration, the ˜ works somewhat like I think you're saying ´ works on yours - the next character you type gets the accent. Here it's <option>n and <option>e, respectively.

And there's «, », 1º, 1ª, and then there's a sort of character library application you can fire up if you want to čeština.

[alfredr]

Ahh. Apples and crawfish, then.