microsoft
Quick Accent: Enhancement: Add "¡" and "¿" to "!" and "?" quick accent menu
Description of the new feature / enhancement
When "!" +
Scenario when this would be used?
This is a set of characters used when writing in Spanish. It marks the beginning of an exclamation or question in a sentence.
Supporting information
No response
Both are available, but they are accessed from the comma (,) key, and only ¿ shows up when Spanish is selected in Quick Accent.
The fix to add ¡ to the Spanish options looks pretty simple, just adding it to the characters in Languages.cs for the LetterKey.VK_COMMA key. The current version of @damienleroy's version includes both characters in the Spanish characters.
It looks like it might be possible to have characters mapped to the question mark ? key with LetterKey.VK_OEM_2. I don't see that actually used for any other language, so maybe there's a technical reason why nothing is mapped to the ? key. Someone else would have to comment on that.
I understand there may not be a usable implementation of this request with the current version of Quick Accent: looking at KeysEnums.cs, it seems to only "listen" to numbers, letters, and the comma (the reason for the current assignment to comma of "¡" and "¿" ?) But I am still missing something, because for "/" it offers "÷" as an option.
Maybe in the future, a "customizable" version could be possible, where the user may assign needed keys for their own keyboard, e.g. for me "¡" on the "1"/"!" key, and "¿" to the "/"-"?" key (and a German user assign the "¿" on the upper side of the keyboard to the "ß"/"?" key)
Regarding the comment above, about a technical reason for nothing being assigned to a "?" key, could it be that it is not listed in KeysEnums.cs? Maybe this is for a good reason: looking up some international keyboards, I was not able to find the "?" key on the Portuguese or Ukranian keyboards for example.
Also, Quick Accent seems to ignore the shift key; on a US keyboard the options presented to "3" are the same as for "#" (consistent with what KeysEnums.cs shows), and the "!" and "?" are usually "shifted" keys already, not "base" keys, located over different base keys on different international keyboards, when present.
To be useful, for example on a US Keyboard, see the precedent of the "US International" keyboard from Microsoft, and look up the positions for "¡" and "¿" (on the "1"/"!" and "/"-"?" keys with AltGr).
As new user of Quick Accent on a german Keyboard layout working with spanish characters, my assumption was that I have to hit "SHIFT + ? + SPACEBAR" as I assume that the qustion mark will would be upside down as a result.
@rorar, that is not really possible, since Quick Accent determines what key you pressed based on the Virtual Key Code (VK), not the character that was sent. That means that pressing Shift has no effect on the output, other than capitalizing the characters, if possible.
The VK for the ß? key on the German keyboard layout is VK_OEM_4, which is the [{ key on the US keyboard. It wouldn't make sense to have "¿" on OEM_4, since that sends many different characters on different layouts (I know that the table doesn't show the shift states, but you get the point, just compare it to VK_OEM_COMMA, that has a comma (,) on 149 out of 212 layouts).
The developers decided that !¡?¿ will be on the comma key and there isn't really a better way to do it.
And @atseewal, I don't think there is a technical reason that would make it impossible to have ¿ on VK_OEM_2, but it doesn't really make sense. Just 96 out of 212 keyboard layouts (45%) use OEM_2 for the question mark (actually just 77 have U+003F on OEM_2, but I counted all forms of the question mark (؟?՞？︖)). Also, the inverted question mark doesn't really need a separate key, it can be with the other punctuation marks. That's why it is on OEM_COMMA.
As you said, I think that the fix should be adding ¡ to Spanish.
