I need a French or Apple speaker

[AlexBell]

I'm in process of preparing a book in English which is set in France in the 1500s for the MobileRead Library. The original text is from Project Gutenberg and the French words with accents do not display properly - the accents do not show as html entities, and may be Apple speak.

I've got all the words so far with the aid of a small French dictionary and the remnants of the French I learned when I lived in Canada, but the latest one has defeated me. The word appears as estramaçons, and is used in the context of a sword fight.

Can anyone tell me please what the French word is, preferably with the accents, or what ç would be as an html entity?

I've looked at several versions of the original book on the Internet Archive, but they are all full of OCR errors.

[LovesMacs]

I believe you are talking about an "estramaçon", as in "un estramaçon", or broadsword. In case the accent does not appear correctly on your screen, it is spelled in the singular as e s t r a m a c (with a cedilla) o n.

[AnemicOak]

EDIT: I see LoveMacs replied with the same thing, estramaçon, (broadsword or greatsword) while I was looking online.

[AlexBell]

Thanks so much to both of you for the speedy responses.

It seems that ç means c cedilla, or ç in html.

[Rizla]

European languages have lots of complicated accents. You can see why English has caught on.

[AlexBell]

I don't usually have much problem with French; it's the Apple speak that brought me undone.

[curtw]

Originally Posted by AlexBell

I don't usually have much problem with French; it's the Apple speak that brought me undone.

Yeah, but if you're typing on a Mac, access to non-English characters is so much easier than the arcane "Alt+426" format of Windows...

Option-c gives you ç
Option-e gives you é
Option-u gives you ü
Option-n gives you ñ
Etc.

I think last time I was writing a memo in Windows 7, it took me five minutes and Google to find ñ to type a colleague's name.

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by curtw

Yeah, but if you're typing on a Mac, access to non-English characters is so much easier than the arcane "Alt+426" format of Windows...

Option-c gives you ç
Option-e gives you é
Option-u gives you ü
Option-n gives you ñ
Etc.

I think last time I was writing a memo in Windows 7, it took me five minutes and Google to find ñ to type a colleague's name.

What do you do if you want different accents over/under the characters? For example, in Polish you can have ę and ń.

[curtw]

Originally Posted by rkomar

What do you do if you want different accents over/under the characters? For example, in Polish you can have ę and ń.

You get to prioritize your non-English languages. I would guess that if you moved Polish up to the front of that priority list, some of those characters would move in to those easy-to-remember keyboard shortcut spots, and become very intuitive. I just looked at my settings, and I see that the characters you mention are available, but I have French, Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese, Swedish, and Danish all prioritized above Polish.

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by curtw

You get to prioritize your non-English languages. I would guess that if you moved Polish up to the front of that priority list, some of those characters would move in to those easy-to-remember keyboard shortcut spots, and become very intuitive. I just looked at my settings, and I see that the characters you mention are available, but I have French, Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese, Swedish, and Danish all prioritized above Polish.

That seems like a pretty reasonable way of doing it. You tend to work in one language at a time. Thanks for the info.

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by curtw

Yeah, but if you're typing on a Mac, access to non-English characters is so much easier than the arcane "Alt+426" format of Windows...

Option-c gives you ç
Option-e gives you é
Option-u gives you ü
Option-n gives you ñ
Etc.

I think last time I was writing a memo in Windows 7, it took me five minutes and Google to find ñ to type a colleague's name.

That's on your Apple screen. If you put your Option-c into an html file it will show as ç - in the file I was working on the word will be estramaçons rather then estramaçons. I hope you will respond and tell me how you would type estramaçons on your Apple computer so that I can read it on my Windows computer, or someone else could read it on a Linux computer.

It seems to me the whole point of having standards is to enable people to communicate with each other across languages and operating systems. I really haven't found it hard to memorise the most common accents, and to have an html manual by my desk in which I can look up the rest. There are oodles of places on the internet from where one can download free lists.