Hello Edgarcn…
Unfortunately I didn’t come here to solve your problem, but to ask for help for the same difficulties…
I really thought I couldn’t use any accents at all, but after reading your post, I checked out that I couldn’t use only a few of them, however, the most common in our language.
I imagine that people that write in other languages that also make use of accents, such as spanish, might be having the same problems, so, there must be some one out there that knows how to fix this.
At the moment I’m trying 4 programmes, including Scrivener, and although I prefer Scrivener, this is keeping me from making the decision rightaway…
I guess it would help to know what language keyboard you are using … I use the British English keyboard and can enter all the accented characters available in the system – UTF 8 – in the usual way.
The Brazilian Portuguese and/or other keyboards might have the accented characters assigned differently, but unless Keith has re-mapped those keys or key combinations to other things, it would seem strange to me that you can’t, and I wouldn’t have thought Keith would have done that.
I write both in English and Spanish (in which I have similar needs), so I have both keyboard layouts setup under System Preferences->International. Additionally, I have selected “Show input menu in menu bar.” Whenever I want to switch keyboard layouts, all I need is to select the right language. I wish the spelling dictionary would have that option too.
I do neither use the Scriptwriting Mode nor (normally) letters with cedillas etc.
So forgive me if my suggestion is totally stupid – can it be that the Courier font that comes with the Scriptwriting Mode does not contain these “special” characters?
I can place all of those characters fine in both scriptwriting and prose mode. And as the text editor is an OSX function more that a Scrivener one, it sounds like the problem is indeed either to do with keyboard functions, or the typeface you’re using for script.
How do you get the cedilla, for example? On the US keyboard, you just press alt-c, thus: ç. Is it different on Brazilian keyboards?
I tried to replicate the problem here and it seems to me that those characters don’t work only when you are typing in all caps (when Scrivener is configure to format, e.g, a Scene Heading, in all caps). When I write in small caps, I can use all the characters.
When I use MS Word to write all caps (by using caps lock pressed), I am also unable to use some of the accented characters. But, if i type the capitalized character holding shift, I can place the accent.
So, it seems to me that it can be a problem related to the option in Scrivener to automatically capitalize some styles, as scene heading.
Well, I think I can say it definitely has to do with keyboard layouts. I myself, as every Brazilian switcher (win->mac), have installed Rainer Brockerhoff’s US - International keyboard layout (brockerhoff.net/usi/index.html), as it is the only one that mimics the behaviour of accentuation we’re used to when using international keyboards. For example, for the “ç” we use the '+c, for the acute accented vowels, we use '+vowel. Of course, we can use alt+e, then the vowel, but it requires one more keystroke and, most importantly, it’s not the way we’re used to and this is an issue when we have to use other computers. Plus, this only happens with Scrivener in scripting mode. Throughout the system (everywhere), Brockerhoff’s KL works perfectly.
I guess I just won’t keep trying, unfortunately… I really like this programme, but there’s no point in keep trying to make this work when I got only a few days of trial left and all other 3 programmes I’m also trying have similar features and do accept accents.
IF anyone out there can shed some light on this matter, I’d be forever grateful!
Scripting mode doesn’t do anything particularly weird with accents or overriding anything. It would cause issues when auto-capitalising, that is true, but you can just turn off auto-caps and do it manually. If it is not to do with capitalisation, I am at a loss…
Best,
Keith
On a related note, bear in mind that accents don’t really work if you have caps lock on while trying to add them. You have to have caps lock off, hit option + the accent you need, then shift + the letter you need.
