Accented letters vs. keyboard shortcuts

• Feb 15, 2021 - 16:37

Windows 10 x64
MuseScore 3.6.0
Keyboard layout: Microsoft Canadian Multilingual Standard (CMS)

At the moment I'm working with Icelandic text. In MuseScore with default settings, the characters 'ÁáÉéíÓ' are ok, but I can't type 'ÍóÚú'. In MuseScore preferences, the vowels that work are assigned as keyboard shortcuts (A, Shift+A, E, Shift+E, I and Shift+O); The vowels that don't work, are not (Shift+I, O, U and Shift+U).

I then assigned U as a shortcut for something and then was able to type 'ú'. Therefore, assigning these letters to random things seems to be a viable workaround.

In CMS, right control and alt (rCtrl and rAlt) are used for typing extended characters, while left control and alt (lCtrl and lAlt) are for keyboard shortcuts. You have to type rCtrl+; to prepare the aigu accent (´), followed by the vowel to type the character. For example:
rCtrl+; followed by A types 'á'
rCtrl+; followed by Shift+A types 'Á'
rCtrl+; followed by spacebar types the character ´. This is unimportant to me, but incidentally, it doesn't work in lyrics either, because the spacebar advances to the next syllable instead of typing the character.

Ctrl+; is not assigned as a shortcut. It can't be assigned while CMS is active. If it is assigned using another keyboard layout, then upon returning to CMS, it has no effect (the shortcut doesn't work, and typing accented letters is unaffected). I'm ok with this behaviour.

You can type dozens of languages with CMS, but it was primarily created for the Canadian market, and the most common characters for French 'ÉéÈèÇçÀà' have dedicated keys, so it's really less impractical than I might be making it sound. It's handy for working in multiple languages, and it also has the extended punctuation needed for programming, unlike most French layouts.


Comments

I’m having this problem with Musescore 3.6.2. Neither with English (USA) nor with Spanish keyboard can I get accents other than the ñ except by cutting and pasting from the chat map. It is PAINFUL to put in Spanish lyrics. I am doing a major Ladino song project.

In reply to by SteveBlower

Yup. Found it after I posted. And reposted that I had found it. Is there any way to make a custom shortcut? I only need Spanish accented vowels. The umlaut u is pretty rare, but a e I o are constant. I’m getting used to using the Spanish keyboard for the enye, although it changes the location of underscore and hyphen. Vowel shortcuts would be wonderful.

In reply to by jbkerman

There is no ability to make a custom shortcut, but most OS"s provide a way to get these characters directly - for example, by typing the letter followed by the accent. If your keyboard isn;t configured that way by default, normally there would be an option somewhere in the keyboard settings for that (eg, a "US International" keyboard layout). If your OS doesn't provide such an option, you can also easily add the characters you need to your own Text palette - or any custom palette of your own - so they are always available with just a click.

In reply to by jbkerman

The palettes window is on the left side of your score normally, it’s where you add articulations, dynamics, clefs, etc. the text palette is one of those palettes, but you can use any palette you like or create your own with the button at top. Then simply drag in a symbol from the special characters palette for easy reuse.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Aha. I thought you meant something in Windows. I use most of the palettes a lot, but haven’t noticed the Text palette. And a custom palette is a good idea - I noticed that palettes can be customized, but never investigated how to do that, let alone create one that uses my most frequent selections. I will study…

Thanks. You guys are quick!

In reply to by SteveBlower

Nope. I am trying to enter some French accented letters in the header, and F2, shift F2, ctrl F2, alt F2, double clicking, and right clicking are all dead as a doornail. There must be a way! In the style header-footer entry pane, an annoying menu for selecting predetermined header words interferes with text entry, but if I am very careful I can work around it.

In reply to by richard1941

This long-standing problem about access to Special Characters cripples text entry in:
Format > Style > Header/Footer.

But it's worse than that, because the same lack of access to Special Characters also applies here:
File > Project properties > Work title / Subtitle / Composer
- which is the other obvious place to enter such data.

In reply to by richard1941

The special characters dialog is only active within the score, not with other dialogs. So, if you need a special character in a dialog, enter it first into a piece of staff text or whatever than copy and paste it.

Also note on some systems, you need to press another modifier like Fn to access function keys at all. That’s a function of your keyboard & OS, not of MuseScore.

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