Dear Jean-Philippe,
I'm cc'ing this reply to the viphone list, as well as to you
directly. The basic reply to your question about problems you're
having problems using VoiceOver in touch typing mode under iOS4 is
given in the first two paragraphs, with an explanation of how I use
this on my iPod Touch. The rest of this somewhat lengthy post
describes the way you can type accented characters with an attached
Apple Keyboard (either the Apple Wireless Keyboard or the iPad
Keyboard Dock, both of which can be used with the iPod Touch upgraded
to iOS 4. In addition, I further describe another solution using the
TextExpander Touch app, which allows you to type on the virtual
keyboard. This solution can be applied to the iPad, which really does
still have a problem touch typing accented letters. People who are
not interested in the keyboard solution or using TextExpander Touch
can skip the later parts of this post that describe these
alternatives. Touch typing of accented letters with VoiceOver under
iOS 4 does work; try using a lighter touch on the keys for accented
letters. Touch typing accented characters didn't work for me on the
iPad, but does work on the iPod Touch with iOS 4. If you can't manage
a light enough initial touch on the letter "e" or "a" (as in the
examples you gave), try flicking to the letter to give it focus. Then
do a double tap and hold pass through gesture anywhere on the screen
and shift your finger to the right (or left) to the accent combination
you want, and lift your finger. I typically first lightly touch the
letter on the virtual keyboard to give it focus. Then, I usually do
my double tap and hold above the actual virtual keyboard, and I'll
move to the right (or left) on the screen without lifting my finger
until I hear VoiceOver announce the accent that I want. When I lift my
finger, the accented character gets correctly typed.
To repeat, I could not get this to work reliably on the iPad (either
before or after today's update to OS 3.2.1), but Apple seems to have
adjusted the iPod Touch settings in the iOS 4 update so that this will
work now. On the iPad, no matter how lightly I touch the letter on
the virtual keyboard, it gets typed as soon as I lift my finger, so
there's really no good way to type accented letters unless you can
flick to the letter you want. For example, to type "à" ("a" with a
grave accent) in touch typing mode on the iPad, I have to touch the
delete key (which will move focus to this key, but won't cause any
action, since you'd need to double tap this key for it to delete a
character), then flick right to the "a" key. Then, I can double tap
and hold anywhere on the screen, and I'll hear the sound for the pass-
through gesture. I'll move my finger to the right, and hear VoiceOver
say "a grave, selected", and when I lift my finger from the screen, an
accented "à" will be typed. This means that in order to touchtype
other accented letters, I have to flick further. For, example, if I
want to type "à bientôt" with a circumflex over the "o", I need to
type the "ô" by first touching the delete key, then flick left twice
to give focus to the "o". Then I need to do the double tap and hold
to get the accented combinations. It is possible, but tedious. I
generally do the double tap and hold in the text area above the
virtual keyboard. For an accented letter "e", I flick to the right
from the text area to the start of the keyboard, past the "q" and "w"
letters. (If you are using a French "a z e r t y" keyboard, you would
type your accented "a" by flicking once right from the text area, and
you would type your accented "e" by flicking right again past the "z".)
I am very happy touch typing accented characters on my iPod Touch, and
rather unhappy with the status of touch typing accents on the iPad.
(Not only is touch typing accents still not fixed in the latest OS
3.2.1 iPad update, there are still no signs of the language rotor for
the iPad in the Settings menu.)
You have two alternative solutions for typing accented characters: (1)
use a Bluetooth keyboard like the Apple Wireless Keyboard, or use the
iPad Keyboard Dock with your iPod Touch or (2) use the TextExpander
touch app and define custom snippets for typing accents or accented
words. If you use either the Apple Wireless Keyboard or the iPad
Keyboard Dock, you can type accented characters as though you were
typing on a Macbook laptop keyboard. It is possible to set the
hardware and software keyboard for your desired language under
Settings > General > Keyboard > International Keyboards > French (for
example, or any other selected language).
For an English language input keyboard, I can type the accent key
combination using the standard keyboard with the use of the option key
on either the Apple Wireless Keyboard or the iPad Keyboard Dock.
acute accent - Option+e
grave accent - Option+accent sign (on an Engish input keyboard, this
is the leftmost key below escape and above tab)
circumflex accent - Option+6 (this is different from on a Macbook,
where I would use Option+i; the Shift-6 combination on an English
input keyboard gives the "^" (caret sign), which has the shape of the
circumflex accent
diaeresis - Option+u
cedilla - Option+c
tilde - Option+n (for Spanish and Portuguese)
All the above keys are typed as accent plus accented letter
combinations: you first type the option key combination for the
accent, then you type the letter that you want to be accented. If you
type a space instead of a letter, only the accent mark is typed. So,
for example, to type "à" (a with a grave accent), you would first
press the Option and accent sign keys together, then you would press
the letter "a". To type "â" (a with a circumflex accent), you would
first press the Option and "6" keys together, then you would press the
letter "a". If you pressed the space bar instead a letter following
the Option+6 combination, you would be left with just the circumflex
accent mark.
Some other accents are generated by pressing two key combinations to
generate the letters:
German eszett or sharp ess - Option+s
Nordic slashed o - Option+o
"oe ligature" - Option+q
This is similar to, but not exactly the same as the way accents and
special characters can be typed with Option key combinations on the
Mac. Normally, I would type a "c" with a cedilla on my Mac just using
Option+c. On the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad with an Apple Keyboard I need
to press the Option and "c" keys, and then press the "c" key by itself
again to get a "c" with a cedilla. I suspect that the French hardware
keyboard entry, and those of other languages, may similarly be
slightly different from the way they are used on the Mac. What has
mostly happened is that option key combinations that were used for
mathematical symbols have been removed. Amusingly, the Option key
combination for typing the Apple logo on English language Mac
keyboards (Option+Shift+K) has also been removed. The general way to
find out what particular option key combinations work for your
selected hardware keyboard (e.g. French AZERTY input) would be to
connect an Apple Wireless Keyboard or iPad Keyboard Dock to your iPod
Touch (or iPhone, or iPad), switch to the input language of your
choice (if you have your language rotor set to use more than one
language) with Command+space (to move to the next input language
keyboard) or Command+Shift+Space (to move to the previous input
language keyboard), and then to start typing keyboard combinations
while holding down the Option key and other modifier keys (such as
Shift). Since a few more obscure symbols are not announced by
VoiceOver on the iPhone/iPod Touch, although they are typed, I
generally type these tests into a file that I can check out in
TextEdit with VoiceOver on my Mac.
I'll separately post a longer list of special symbol combinations with
the Apple Wireless Keyboard and iPad Keyboard Dock under iOS 4, but
for now, I'll simply add the option key combinations for typing the
inverted question mark and exclamation point symbols used for Spanish:
¡ inverted exclamation mark Option+1
¿ inverted question mark Option+Shift+slash (Shift+/ is question
mark)
The second method of typing accented characters on a virtual keyboard,
that works for the iPad, is to use TextExpander Touch (an iPhone app
by Smile On My Mac), and define custom "snippets" for typing accented
letters or words. This allows me to type accented letters with key
combinations that automatically change to accented letters, as well as
easily type special characters and symbols. I believe that Yuma, a
member of the CeciMac (French) mailing list has also set up her iPad
this way. You would have to compose the text within the TextExpander
Touch app and copy or then send it on to another app in the case of
mail. Alternatively, there are about two dozen apps that will
natively work with the TextExpander Touch snippet definitions. Among
the default snippet definitions that you can activate is a group
called "Accented words". To read more about the way TextExpander
works, you can check the archived link on: "TextExpander app for easy
HTML creation, typing Spanish, etc.":
http://www.mail-archive.com/macvisionaries%40googlegroups.com/msg22416.html
That post first answers a question about how you could use the Desktop
version of this app to create HTML code, but the second part describes
using it as a shortcut method for typing Spanish accents, and links to
an article that supplies a snippets definition file for expanding
accents in Spanish. The same snippets file used for the Mac Desktop
version of the TextExpander software will work in the iPhone app,
TextExpander Touch. The post also gives an earlier link to specific
discussion about the TextExpander Touch app for the iPhone, iPad, and
iPod Touch, and how to download various predefined snippets
definitions, including one for accented words. Most iPhone users who
use the TextExpander Touch app will use it for straight substitution
-- for example, to define a combination of letters that will expand
into a four line signature when typed. However, it's possible to
customize TextExpander Touch for accent typing, as well. This is
likely to be a special interest use, though, and the app is a bit
expensive at its regular price of $4.99.
TextExpander Touch ($4.99) by SmileOnMyMac:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/textexpander/id326180690?mt=8
HTH. Cheers,
Esther
On Jul 13, 2010, at 07:48, Jean-Philippe Rykiel wrote:
Dear all,
I know that few of you will be concerned with my problem as you,
Lucky English speaking folks, don't have to use these à or â or é
characters.
But I'm having problems accessing these characters with the new
touch type mode on my iPod touch. These characters are usually
linked to their corresponding letter so that what you would normally
do is double tap and hold a letter and slide your finger to get all
the alternatives to this particular letter.
With the new touch type mode, it gets a little bit harder , but it
still should work if you select a letter by hitting it very briefly
and double tap and hold anywhere on the screen. The problem is that
it works sometimes but not always and I think it's a bug.
I sent a mail to Apple access ability, but all I got was this
automated reply saying that they thanked me for my feedback and blah
blah blah.
Is there anyone I could send this bug report to, who would give me
a more constructive answer?
all the best,
JPR
http://www.facebook.com/jprykiel
http://myspace.com/jeanphilipperykiel
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