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Support for AltGraph glyphs/accents in Chat

Caitríona
Listener

When using zoom chat, some accented glyphs cannot be input, regardless of the user's system keyboard settings or hardware. For instance, the Alt/AltGr+i shortcut does not result in a fada í even with an "Irish" keyboard, but always results in italicizing text. It would be preferable if these shortcuts were changed to make typing input conform with system settings, en par with word processing software - where italicizing or bolding is achieved with Ctrl+i and ctrl+b, respectively. I could also imagine just treating the Alt and Alt Graph keys differently, so existing shortcuts could keep working with the Alt key, but the AltGr key would work for inputting special characters.

Another solution could be adding a toggle control to enable/disable the italics shortcut and other potential interferences in the chat options.

This issue is occurring in all English and German language settings I've tested - Umlauts do seem typable on a German QWERTZ keyboard, but not with shortcuts on an international keyboard. Would love to know if other languages have this issue as well.

This is particularly troublesome for school use, as "accented" vowels are an integral part of the Irish language, and they change both the pronunciation and meaning of words. Not being able to type a simple í/Í is very obtrusive. 

3 REPLIES 3

FRodriguez
Listener

I agree with you 100%. I teach both French and Spanish using Zoom and accents are completely integral to the sense of the language. I have as yet found no way at all of representing the correct accent on Spanish vowels, even when I've changed the Chat language to Spanish. I could of course copy and paste each letter from Word, but in the middle of a lesson when I'm trying to explain vocabulary that really doesn't work. I want to be able to use the Word shortcuts (e.g. CTRL/apostrophe followed by the vowel in question) so I can just type uninterrupted. Surely it can't be that hard to implement?

 

delphinevanessa
Listener

hi there any luck with this? I teach French and I cannot get the accents to work when I'm in session with a student. It works fine when I try on my own but cannot figure out how to get it to work. It's super frustrating.

Donquixote
Listener

There is one way that works for me, ie to use 'English UK Extended Keyboard' on my Windows 10 computer. (This is a setting in the computer, not a physical keyboard.)  However, other friends have been unable to install that keyboard, it isn't offered on their machines.  To try this, go to: settings, time and language, language, keyboard and then pull down the menu in the box near the top of that window.  If you have this option you can select it and leave it like that, it covers French, Irish accents etc.  All 5 french accents can be typed without entering numeric codes, use AltGr together with the required key, and for the à accent use the Grave key which is to the left of key 1, but in this case press and release before pressing the vowel.  But for everyday changes to the keyboard option, for anyone else here, click on ENG (bottom right of screen) and select the keyboard option.  If you don't have 'english UK extended' on your machine I don't know what to suggest, sorry.  But you will still be able to use these keystrokes in Word etc, even without UK Extended, it's just in Zoom chat that you have the limitation.  Could be wrong.