How do I type the Spanish inverted question mark in Emacs?

Question

I want to write in Spanish without having to keep Charmap open! How do I type the Spanish inverted question and exclamation marks?

¡Quiero escribir en Castellano sin usar el charmap! ¿Cómo escribo los signos de interrogación y exclamación?

• How do I type these characters in Emacs?
• How do I type them in any general input box in Windows?

Answer 1

Answering our own questions is encouraged, so here we go:

In any Windows editor or text box

Source: here

Hold Alt and type a number corresponding to the char code.

To use the decimal Unicode value, prefix the number with a zero, example: Alt 0191

To use the decimal windows code page value, prefix the number with a zero, example: Alt 161

According to source, you can also type the Unicode hex value, but that needs an entry in registry and did not work for me.

• Inverted question mark (¿):

• Alt 0191

• Alt 168

• Alt +00A1

• Inverted exclamation mark (­¡):

• Alt 0161

• Alt 173

• Alt +00BF

In Emacs

Source: xahlee's Emacs page.

1. Inverted question mark (¿):

• C-x 8 ?

2. Inverted exclamation mark (­¡):

• C-x 8 !

You can also use function ucs-insert (M-x ucs-insert or C-x 8 RET) and Emacs will request a hex value to insert the character.

Or set the input method (M-x set-input-method) to ucs and type normally. To insert a Unicode char, type u.

Answer 2

Emacs

(The following solution is really for writing in Spanish. If just a ¿ is to be inserted once or twice in your document then the other answers might be more appropriate)

A convenient way to write Spanish in Emacs with an American QWERTY keyboard is to use the input methods spanish-prefix or spanish-postfix (for a general introduction into input methods see Emacs User Manual - Sect. 22.3 - this is very convenient framework if you have to edit/compose text in several languages).

For spanish-postfix the following key combinations enable to write the diacritics and special characters of the Spanish language:

KEY SEQUENCE
------------
You can input characters by the following key sequences:
key char  [type a key sequence to insert the corresponding character]
--- ---- --- ---- --- ---- --- ---- --- ---- --- ---- --- ----
!/  ¡    A'  Á    I'  Í    O'  Ó    a'  á    i'  í    o'  ó
?/  ¿    E'  É    N~  Ñ    U'  Ú    e'  é    n~  ñ    u'  ú

Doubling the postfix separates the letter and postfix:
a'' -> a'   n~~ -> n~, etc.

key character(s)  [type a key (sequence) and select one from the list]
--- ------------
U"  Ü U"
u"  ü U"

For spanish-prefix it works like this:

    effect   | prefix | examples
 ------------+--------+----------
    acute    |   '    | 'a -> á
  diaeresis  |   "    | "u -> ü
    tilde    |   ~    | ~n -> ñ
   symbol    |   ~    | ~> -> »   ~< -> «   ~! -> ¡   ~? -> ¿

Above tables are excerpts from the information you get by doing M-x describe-input-method on the respective input methods.

In order to activate the input-mode you press Ctrl+u Ctrl+\ and enter spanish-postfix or spanish-prefix. Now the key-combinations are activated, e.g. pressing ~? (spanish-prefix) or ?/ (spanish-postfix) produces the desired ¿.

If you are done with writing non-QWERTY characters, you can switch back to the normal input method by pressing Ctrl+\.

Windows > 8

One way is to switch the global input method back and forth between your default keyboard layout and a Spanish keyboard layout. For a detailed HowTo see here: https://kb.wisc.edu/helpdesk/page.php?id=27310

Answer 3

According to this you can type the ¿ character by holding Alt and typing 1,6,8 on the number pad (make sure num lock is on).

This works on a standard UK keyboard on Windows XP running setup as English UK, as that's how I've written the ¿ character both times in this post, and I think should work on other setups as it's the standard entry method for unicode characters.

There might be a faster way if you have a Spanish keyboard and/or language settings, but I don't have any experience of that to be able to comment.

And, unfortunate, I cannot help with how you type the character in to emacs.

Answer 4

For an Emacs solution, use one of its input methods. For the characters used in Spanish, another possibility is iso-transl, which lets you type C-x 8 ? for ¿, C-x 8 ' a for á, etc.

For an OS solution, you could remap your keyboard to make the characters available through AltGr, dead keys or a Compose key. Windows is a bit lacking here, and in particular doesn't support Compose out of the box. I use AllChars; note that you need Emacs 24 (e.g. downloaded from the EmacsW32 site) as the current stable version doesn't recognize AllChars's “fake” keypresses.