Type special characters similar to Windows

Question

My son follows an online typing course for school. This course is offert through a website. As my son advances, he needs to type characters like: è, é, ë, ü, ï.

We have not found a way to type these characters in a way it satisfies the typing course. I think the site expects you to type a sequence of characters.

For example, to type the é I think it expects an ' + e. We tried multiple ways of typing these characters but have not found a way to satisfy the course software.

These tricks did not work for me:

• When you holddown on the e key the typingcourse software directly registers an e and it is counted as a wrong keystroke.
• When you press the ' MacOS directly prints the character which is not the character the typingcourse software expects and it is counted as a wrong keystroke.

Is there a way to mimic the Windows way of doing the keystrokes? Preferably without any additional software installs like Keyboard Maestro of similar.

And yes, I have send an email to the supplier but have not heard anything yet.

Answer 1

To mimic the Windows way, go to system preferences > keyboard > input sources and use the plus button to activate the layout called "US International PC". Then select it in the "flag" menu at the top right of the screen. This layout produces é when you type ' and then e, ü when you type " and then u, ò when you type ` and then o, â when you type ^ and then a, ñ when you type ~ and then n.

character	key sequence
apostrophe '
ç	' c
é	' e
ú	' u
í	' i
ó	' o
á	' a
quotation mark "
ë	" e
ÿ	" y
ü	" u
ï	" i
ö	" o
ä	" a
accent grave `
è	` e
ù	` u
ì	` i
ò	` o
à	` a
tilde ~
õ	~ o
ñ	~ n
ã	~ a
caret ^
ê	^ e
û	^ u
î	^ i
ô	^ o
â	^ a

Answer 2

This is actually much easier on Mac than it is on Windows.
The Mac uses things called 'dead keys' which windows doesn't. On an English keyboard they are all accessed using the Option key, sometimes marked Alt or just ⌥, plus the dead key.
After you press the opt/dead key combination, you then just add the letter to which it should apply.

The dead key combinations are
Opt ⌥ + e gives ´
Opt ⌥ + ` gives `
Opt ⌥ + n gives ~
Opt ⌥ + u gives ¨
Opt ⌥ + i gives ^

So you set the dead key then add the letter -

Opt ⌥ + n then n gives ñ
Opt ⌥ + ` then a gives à
Opt ⌥ + u then i gives ï
etc

You can see all these marked in orange on the keyboard viewer