"Roland Perry" wrote in message
...
In message , at 19:38:19 on
Thu, 21 Jan 2010, DW downunder remarked:
What's AltGr?

A key often found near the righthand end of the space-bar. It stands for
ALTernative GRaphics, but is just another super-shift key.

The one on my Toshiba lappie brings up the [Edit] menu.

You can set "shortcuts" on keyboard keys, so your Toshiba must have that
one active. AltE I presume.

I think we can conclude that mileages do vary quite a bit on this one

IBM PC keyboards are hugely complex, and to some extent a forgotten art;
although I suspect the Internationalised Domain Names project is
resurrecting some of the skills. Start here and see how byzantine it all
is; "mileage varying" doesn't even begin to scratch the surface!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page

And inevitably: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AltGr

AltGr4 is one of the most useful here, being a Euro Symbol. Which would
be defeated if AltGr has the kind of shortcut you describe installed.

Phew. This takes me back to designing keyboards in the mid-80's. One of my
staff did what I believe to be the first mass-produced Russian keyboards,
as well as our efforts in about 15 different traditional European
languages.
--
Roland Perry

I'm not going off the planet, just at the other end of it.

The answer is here (copied from the wiki reference on AltGr above):

QUOTE
Using the AltGr key on UK & Irish keyboards in some versions of Windows (for
example XP) in combination with vowel characters produces acute accents over
the vowels (for example, á,é,í,ó,ú and Á,É,Í,Ó,Ú).
end QUOTE

My lappie KB is clearly not British - my word, chaps, that just won't do!
G

In fact, it most likely is US International. I shall have to have a play
sometime to see if it is a user choice, etc. So, while good for those on ukr
with British/Irish keyboards, if it doesn't work, chances are that it's a US
International keyboard, requiring use of the CTL-ALT-nnn keystrokes.

DW downunder