Apologies if this topic already exists; I didn’t see one when I searched briefly.
It would be extremely useful if Scrivener could add key commands for special characters (such as accented letters, tildes, nordic characters, etc) for Windows. It is extremely tedious to have to stop writing and find the word to copy/paste into the document, or to scroll through the character map. On MS Word, you can input it by CTRL+accent followed by the letter (or, in some cases, CTRL+Shift+accent). It would really be helpful not to have to break the flow of writing just to find the correct letter.
You can enable substitutions, so you could type for example, ~a to have it replaced by an ä automatically. To do this, go to Tools/Options/Corrections and enable additional substitutions, then open the substitution list and add the trigger and replacements.
The tilde should be an unshifted (natural) key on your keyboard if you are using a uk or american keyboard, usually found on the key above the tab key, or on the # key above the right shift. I have no idea what you mean by the accent key (are you using a continental European keyboard?).
You can use the replacements to autocorrect common typos, such as teh instead of the, as well as for creating shortcuts for labour intensive words such as thanatognominy, which if you have to type more than once is probably something you might well start worshiping Kevin as a god (or at least a minor deity) for giving you the possibility of being able to just type tat and seeing the full word appear as if by magic.
Have you tried Windows keyboard layouts and languages for this? The US International layout or UK Extended for instance allow you to easily type various accented letters with just a few strokes, e.g. on the US Int.
'+e
will give you é. You can easily switch between layouts and keep them application-specific. This site does a nice job listing the shortcuts and how to set up the keyboards on various systems: tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/inte … deint.html.