Non-English languages on an ITS PC
The keyboard on an IT Services PC is set up to type using the UK English character set. This means besides the letters there are additional characters such as the pound sign (£) but no accented letters available.
Sometimes you need to include other "international" characters such as accented letters when you are using Word. There are two ways to achieve this. The first method is to use key combinations. In some ways this method is the easier but it only works with Word. You cannot use it when composing an email message or with other applications such as Excel. The second method changes the layout of the keyboard to that used in another country.
Using key combinations
If your requirement is restricted to the characters shown below you can generate the characters by using the Alt, Ctrl, Alt Gr, and Shift keys. You should be already familiar with most of these keys; you use the Shift key for uppercase letters and the Alt and Ctrl keys to login to the PC. The Alt Gr is to the right of the spacebar. You use the keys in combination with another.
Examples
To produce è
- Hold down the Ctrl key and press the ` key (which is at the top left of the keyboard).
- Release the Ctrl key.
- Press the e key.
To produce ¿
- Hold down the Alt, Ctrl, and Shift keys and press the ? key.
- Release the Alt, Ctrl, and Shift keys.
To produce ß
- Hold down the Ctrl and Shift keys and press the & key.
- Release the Ctrl and Shift keys.
- Press the s key.
Typing International Characters
Changing the keyboard layout
It is possible to change the layout of the keys on an IT Services PC to that used with a number of other languages.
The ability to change the keyboard layout to a different language is very useful to those familiar with that keyboard layout which can be very different from the "English" layout. For example the Q and A keys are interchanged on the "French" keyboard. If your native language is English you might find the alternative method of generating accented characters, etc, described above easier to use.
The keyboard layouts available are listed in the following table. Click on the entry in the second column to see the layout. If you want a printed copy we recommend that you use the entry in the third column.
| Language | GIF: for viewing on screen |
PDF: for printing |
|---|---|---|
| French | french.gif | french.pdf |
| German | german.gif | german.pdf |
| Greek | greek.gif | greek.pdf |
| Italian | italian.gif | italian.pdf |
| Russian | russian.gif | russian.pdf |
| Spanish | spanish.gif | spanish.pdf |
| Swedish | swedish.gif | swedish.pdf |
In the diagram, the small (red) characters at the top left of each key is the symbol you will find on the PC's key itself. The larger (blue) character shown on the key in the diagram will be shown on the PC's screen when that key is pressed.
Let us use the Spanish layout as an example. Here, the Q key, at the top left of the keyboard, will produce the letter q and the key that is marked ; will produce ñ.
Normally holding down the Shift key when a key is pressed will produce a capital letter, in the two example mentioned Q and Ñ. (The Shift keys are coloured yellow in the diagram.) When this is not the case the shifted form is shown in the diagram (in black) above the "normal" character. For example, if the shift is held down when the digit 5 key is pressed the % will be displayed on the PC's screen. Another example is the = key which will produce the characters ¡ and ¿.
In some cases you have to press two keys consecutively to generate an accented letter. We have already seen that, when we have selected the Spanish keyboard, by pressing the ; key we generate a ñ. If you want to include a é while using the Spanish keyboard you will have to press the ' key and then the e key. In the diagrams keys used in this way to generate accents are shown in purple.
Some keys can generate more than two characters. The additional characters are shown in green in the diagrams. An example on the Spanish layout is the key marked 6. This produces a 6 or, if you use the shift key, the & character. If you hold down the Alt Gr key (which is to the right of the space bar and is coloured pink in the diagram) when pressing the key you will produced the ¬ character. Another example is the # key. This can be used as normal to produce ç and Ç. It can also be used with Alt Gr to produce the { symbol.
Changing keyboard layouts
The procedure for changing the language layout is:
- Click on the current option displayed as a pair of letters in the system tray at the bottom right of the screen. It should be EN for English as below:
- Select the required layout from the menu:
- The selected layout will be indicated by the code in the system tray. In the example below ES indicates Spanish:
