Is it possible to design a custom keyboard layout or macro keys in OS x?

[Kraythe]

The problem I have is that I am an english speaker but do business with people in several languages. Often I have to type names of people with accented characters from german, currency symbols from other countries and so on. In windows Im forever opeing char map but that gets tedious for common keys such as the english pound or euro sign. Is there a way in OS X that one can assign certain key combinations to produce certain letters ?

[Applespider]

Most of them are already built in if you know where to look.

Try holding down the option key and going along your keyboard to find the most common accents like acutes and umlauts - I'm on a Windows keyboard so can't do them easily here!

The pound sign though is option 3 on a US keyboard and I think that the € sign is option 4

[dcv]

Most of them are already built in if you know where to look.

Try holding down the option key and going along your keyboard to find the most common accents like acutes and umlauts - I'm on a Windows keyboard so can't do them easily here!


If you go to System Preferences > International > Input Menu there is a 'character palette' and 'keyboard viewer' available. Check both of these. Then at the bottom of this screen is an option to 'Show input menu in menu bar'. If you check this option then you'll get a little country flag in your menu bar and from there you'll have easy access to these items. The character palette is pretty much the same thing as the Windows character map. The keyboard viewer is useful as it will show you which symbols are available for different modifier key combinations (i.e. hold down the shift/ctrl/alt key etc and it'll flash up the available characters on a little map of the keyboard).