Dumb question: how to type special characters?

[henk.setten 8]

Hi, I'm probably totally stupid but after two weeks of playing with my Pro1 I still haven't found out how to type special characters (such as a-umlaut, ä) nor how to insert emojis.

I would expect the "Alt" or "Sym" keys would somehow get me there, but both these keys just seem dead keys. They seem to do nothing at all (not when tried alone, nor in combination with other keys) .

Background info: I have a QWERTY phone. On advice found here at the forum, I installed FinQwerty and then set the keyboard to "FinQwerty US", this to normalize the use of the shift key (and this worked out OK).

For virtual keyboard I had installed AnySoftKeyboard, because I was used to this app on my other phone. Could this virtual keyboard perhaps have had an impact on the functioning of the hardware keyboard? If so, then how do I disable this installed keyboard and restore the default situation? In the virtual keyboard settings, apart from Google Talk I see no default or alternative setting.

What obvious thing am I overlooking? How do I access special characters from the hardware keyboard?

Thanks to anyone who can correct my dumbness...

[Craig 1,435]

Alt by itself should bring up emoji already.

(Right-Alt should bring up symbols, but Fxtec hasn't mapped any key to that; hopefully next OTA they fix that for the symbol key).

There are lots of symbols available in various finqwerty layouts tho.  I'd suggest US international (with 3rd level dead keys) for English..

(Also, maybe next ota will bring us 'alpha' setting, then we may  get some accented letter choices on longpress of some letters, along with sticky modifiers).

 

[D1ggs 141]

Don't forget to deselect the keyboard profile and hide the notification to set it, the keyboard will then operate as intended. This is a nuisance bug. 

Edited February 9, 2020 by D1ggs

[henk.setten 8]

1 hour ago, Craig said:

Alt by itself should bring up emoji already.

Well, as I said, Alt by itself does nothing here. It's just a dead key.

 

 

[henk.setten 8]

58 minutes ago, D1ggs said:

Don't forget to deselect the keyboard profile and hide the notification to set it, the keyboard will then operate as intended. This is a nuisance bug. 

Could you please explain? What keyboard profile should I deselect, where? And what notification? I've never seen a notification about the keyboard, so I'm mystified.

[henk.setten 8]

2 hours ago, Craig said:

I'd suggest US international (with 3rd level dead keys) for English

Ah, thanks, this suggestion worked very well and got at least the accents back. Thanks a lot! 

Now I still wonder why the Alt key does nothing at all here... but as it is, I can live without emojis, of course.

I also thought the F (Fxtec logo) key should bring up a way to set program shortcuts for the A-Z keys. But with me it always opens Google Search, no matter which one of the A-Z keys I press in conjunction with it. If I press it by itself (without another key) it just opens the Home page.

So I still think something might be wrong with my keyboard settings, only I have no clue what I need to change...

Anyway, thanks again, you solved the most urgent problem for me!

[Craig 1,435]

Thats also a setting they missed, but hopely comes with OTA.  For Android global shortcuts we need "meta" key.

[EskeRahn 5,427]

23 minutes ago, henk.setten said:

Now I still wonder why the Alt key does nothing at all here...

If you got swiftkey installed, it kills that feature, but it brings it as a touch button in its own bar.

[Craig 1,435]

5 hours ago, henk.setten said:

Could you please explain? What keyboard profile should I deselect, where? And what notification? I've never seen a notification about the keyboard, so I'm mystified.

He's mistaken.  If you have finqwerty layouts installed, you can use them.   The layouts included with stock (besides german for qwertz) don't use the fn-key at all, so the only way to get slash and question mark on qwerty is to not select any layout at all - but then shift won't work right, so finqwerty is a better solution anyway.

Edited February 10, 2020 by Craig

[D1ggs 141]

Sorry for not being specific. I wasn't happy with the FinQwerty layouts. In another post, someone had mentioned it's possible to restore functionality by disabling all of the keyboard layouts. 

Sounds counterintuitive, but if the keyboard input profiles are all blank (deselect all of the profiles and then hit the back arrow) the phone will go to "default". All of the keys, shift, and special characters will work. See my attached photos. 

There will be a notification prompt urging you to select a keyboard input profile. You can tell Android to silence it which is what I did by swiping it partially left or right. 

 

Hope this makes sense, I can be more specific if you need a step by step. Just let me know 😊

 

Edited February 10, 2020 by D1ggs

[Craig 1,435]

Shift will only work for capital letters in that case. Not for anything on the number row for example.

[DieBruine 397]

Alt works for me:

Ù=ALT+`
Ú=ALT+E
Ü=ALT+U
Û=ALT+I
Ũ=ALT+U
ß=ALT+s
ç=ALT+c

I have Swiftkey installed, but it still works when Gboard is selected.

Edited February 11, 2020 by DieBruine

[D1ggs 141]

3 hours ago, Craig said:

Shift will only work for capital letters in that case. Not for anything on the number row for example.

Weird, when I press the yellow arrows ↗ on the bottom row in conjunction with the number keys, I get the special characters like @$^*^.

I'm running the latest version of stock. 

[Craig 1,435]

5 minutes ago, D1ggs said:

Weird, when I press the yellow arrows ↗ on the bottom row in conjunction with the number keys, I get the special characters like @$^*^.

I'm running the latest version of stock. 

Not weird, that's the case for all qwerty devices with no layout selected on all the versions they've released (thru 2020-01-06).

[D1ggs 141]

31 minutes ago, Craig said:

Not weird, that's the case for all qwerty devices with no layout selected on all the versions they've released (thru 2020-01-06).

Sorry Craig, I'm totally confused now. We want Shift to be the button that calls up special characters instead of the yellow arrow? 

 

If that's the case, then I'm just going to sit quietly in this corner. Just ignore me. My bad guys! 

[Craig 1,435]

I don't know what "we" want.  I was just referring to what happens the way it is now.  Right now on qwerty  with no layout selected, shift only works for capitol letters, it does not work for the rest of the second level keys, only those weird slanted arrow keys, sometimes referred to oem keys or Fn keys, do that. 

If I don't like any of the available layouts, I'd bug the finqwerty guy, he's fast to make changes if there's good reason, etc.   Until OTA includes some useful layouts, anyway.  

But as to how I'd like it to work?  Of course I'd like shift to work normally for 2nd level.  I'd like the right slant arrow to act as slash key (and level 2 would be question mark).    I'd like left slant arrow to be 3rd level modifier for us-international layout.  I'd like all modifier keys to be sticky (including that left slant arrow).   I do not want 3rd layer keys assigned to alt like I believe some finqwerty layouts use, as alt should be reserved for use as Alt.  And in the kernel itself, I'd like Sym to be changed to right-alt (for symbol keyboard) and Fxtec key to be Meta (for global shortcuts).

One other thing I'd like is Fx+number row to be F1-F12.  But I understand if Fx key is assigned to meta as I want, only program shortcuts can be used, not keyboard shortcuts; so unless someone writes individual programs to send F1-F12, that won't work with the way Android is now. If I knew how to do that, I think it'd be worth the effort.  I considered suggesting using the left slant-arrow, except then can't have standard us-intl 3rd level keys, and I do occasionally use ¹²£€  so don't want to mess with those.     Perhaps the sym key can be used that way, dunno if thats possible or not, but I keep learning new things every day.    

I'm just looking forward to see what stock does with their next OTA and what LOS does when they get a little closer to release...

If they'd just given us a slash key in the first place, the standard layouts would have worked fine, it seems really odd they chose to give us those two weird keys, and a whole bunch of less important (but standard) symbols, but not even include slash/question mark, keys used constantly (slash for urls and paths, question mark for regular English).

Edited February 10, 2020 by Craig

[D1ggs 141]

Thanks mate, that makes perfect sense. 

 

[John Veness 57]

I think Alt to bring up emojis only works with Gboard. It doesn't work with Swiftkey and doesn't work with AnySoftKeyboard either. I don't know if there's a way to make it work with any keyboard.