Quickstart

This quickstart manual tells you how you can use IntlTyper to type "Österreichisch, Français aŭ Español". (Österreichisch is German and means "Austrian", Français is French and means "French", aŭ is Esperanto and means "or", Español is Spanish and means "Spanish")

  1. Use WinZip or a similar program to extract IntlTyper# from intltyper-sharp-version.zip into a new directory (e. g. C:\Program Files\Intltyper.
  2. Start IntlTyper# by doubleclicking IntlTyper.exe
  3. Open a new Wordpad, Notepad or similar program.
  4. Press and hold the Ctrl key and press the Contexmenu key (the one left of the right Ctrl key, with a mouse cursor and a menu on it)
  5. A box like this will pop up:
    Quick Window screenshot
  6. Type ""O" or "Oe" into that box, a Ö will appear in your text.
  7. Continue typing your text: sterreihisch, Fran
  8. Repeat step 5 and 6, but use ,c (Comma, c) this time.
  9. Complete the text the same way. ŭ is "u(" or "uu", ñ is "~n".
  10. If you want to know how to look up characters in Intltyper, read the full manual ;-)

IntlTyper# Documentation

Invocation

Tray Icon

IntlTyper# puts an icon into your system tray. Right-clicking it will provide a menu with the following options:

Exit closes IntlTyper#; other commands open the respective window.

Keyboard Shortcut

IntlTyper# registers a keyboard shortcut, [Ctrl]+[Contextmenu]. The Context menu key is one of the "Windows keys", the right one between the right Alt key and the right Ctrl key. It is much easier to type this shortcut with your right Ctrl key (if your PC has one; some notebooks do not). Currently it is not possible to change this keyboard shortcut.

When pressing the shortcut, the Quick Window appears, pressing it again will toggle between Main Window and Quick Window. Pressing the shortcut in the Editor Window will move the cursor to the Mnemonics text box. In all other dialogs, pressing the hotkey won't have any effect.

The Quick Window

Quick
Window screenshot

The Quick window is used to quickly enter characters. It can be opened via the tray icon context menu or by pressing the hotkey. Just type a mnemonic into the box and the character will be inserted (closing the QuickWindow). There are several mnemonic sets available (you can define your own ones if you like), some of them have a default length. If you want to enter a character which has a shorter Mnemonic, just press the Return key or click "Insert". Use the space bar to cycle through all mnemonic sets.

Some programs have problems receiving keyboard input from IntlTyper (or international characters get mangled). To use IntlTyper with these programs, you can use the clipboard to transfer characters. Press Return once in the QuickWindow to enable ClipMode. (You can cancel ClipMode by pressing Escape). Now enter your mnemonic (press Return if needed) — the mnemonic will just disappear. If you need more mnemonics, you can enter them now as well. Press Return again after that to copy all that characters to clipboard and close the Quick Window. IntlTyper# will try to send a Ctrl+V keyboard event to your program now. Even if this fails, the characters are in clipboard now (just as if you used CharMap) and can be pasted.

The "Simple" Editor

Simple Editor
screenshot

This editor is useful if you want to type text with lots international characters. To open this editor, either use the tray icon context menu, or press Return twice (without entering anything) in the Quick Window.

You can use the large box like a regular editor. When you press the Tab key, you will jump into the "Code" box, which will work like the Quick Window (except that there is no ClipMode). So you can press Tab instead of the hotkey, and you do not have to wait until the focus has switched between windows.

A unique feature of the IntlTyper# editor are AutoType definitions. They are activated by typing certain text into the editor box (due to technical reasons, copy&paste of single characters cannot be distinguished from typing; copy&paste of longer text will not trigger AutoType definitions). They will only work if you type the last character last; if you insert a character in the middle, it will not work (this can be used to type things that usually get replaced).

Currently AutoType definitions cannot be edited (except by editing the .ini file). There are two AutoType definitions included: German and Esperanto. German will replace "Ae, Oe, Ue, ae, oe, ue, sz" by "Ä, Ö. Ü. ä. ö. ü. ß"; Esperanto will replace "Cx, Gx, Hx, Jx, Sx, Ux, cx, gx, hx, jx, sx, ux, C^, G^, H^, J^, S^, U^, c^, g^, h^, j^, s^, u^" by the Esperanto equivalents. However, since those combinations are quite common, there are "bailout" definitions available that allow you to type these keys easily as well: Either put two dashes in between (e. g. "a--e" will become "ae") or double the second key ("aee" will become "ae", "ae--e" will become "äe"). If you need two or more dashes, just use one dash more ("a---e" will become "a--e", "a-----e" will become "a----e"). Or use Copy&paste, or disable AutoType, or type it "backwards" - first type the last letter and then enter the rest before it...

The Main Window

The main window consists of four tabs, "Actions", "Characters", "Mnemonics", and "Options". You can select tabs, as in every Windows program, by clicking them or by pressing Ctrl+Tab.

The Actions tab

Main Window with
Actions tab visible

This tab works like the quick window, except that it does not automatically insert characters (you have to press Return explicitly) and it does not support ClipMode. Instead, there is a status bar containing some information.

The Characters tab

Main Window with
Characters tab visible

This tab can be used to search the unicode character list. Just enter words that should appear in the unicode title (e. g. search "capital cedilla" to find capital letters with a cedilla, or "capital h with" to find capital letters h with some ornaments). You can negate words as well: Search "phi !greek" to find phi symbols, but no greek phi letters. You can add a "*" at the beginning or end of a word to search for incomplete words, like "note*" to find both note and notes or "*space*" to find all kinds of spaces.

You can also search for unicode codepoints (like "#20ac" for the Euro sign) or ranges ("#0020-007f" is all ASCII). Ranges can be typed using wildcards as well: "#01xx" is "#0100-01FF". If you want to search for a single codepoint that does not start with a letter (#A000 to #FFFF start with a letter) you can omit the # sign.

If you have a character (for example by copy&paste) and want to know its Unicode codepoint or its description, enter it alone or include it in quotes: "ä". You can include more than one character as well, if you use quotes.

The results view will show you all matching characters, their description and how often they are assigned to mnemonics. Use the "Find only unassigned results" box if you want to find characters to assign.

There are three preview boxes available on the left, using three different fonts (by default "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Courier New" and "Arial Unicode MS", if available). Click them to choose another font.

"Search selected" will copy all selected characters into the search box (inside quotes). Besides from batch assigning them, you can (ab)use this feature to copy all those characters from the search filed into clipboard.

"Insert selected" tries to insert all selected characters into the application below. If this fails, use the "Search selected" workaround described above.

"Properties" shows properties of the selected character. Here you can also assign new mnemonics to this character. "Batch assign" works similar to properties, only that you can press "Next" or press return in the Properties box to quicky switch to the next selected item.

The Mnemonics tab

Main Window with
Mnemonics tab visible

Here you can enter a mnemonic (or a prefix of it) and search all characters that are assigned to it. User defined mnemonics can be deleted from there.

"Exact match" does not search prefixes, i. e. searching for "sh" will not find "shy". "Unique" will only find mnemonics that have only one assignment, "Clashing" will find those that have more than one. "Properties" works just like in the "Characters" tab.

The Options tab

Main Window with
Options tab visible

You can use this tab to change the order of Mnemonic sets, and as well priorities inside them (e. g. whether RFC or user defined mnemonics are more important in "All Mnemonics"). "Mnemonic Set for search/assign" can be used to limit results that are shown in the "Characters" and "Mnemonics" tab and the "Properties" dialog.


© 2005-2006 Michael Schierl