Chapter 5. Characters in Each Country

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For Tcsh

setenv LANG C

setenv LC_CTYPE "iso_8859_1"

5.2.9 Input from Keyboard

For the Spanish keyboard to work correctly, you need the command

loadkeys /usr/lib/kbd/keytables/es.map

in the corresponding startup (rc) file.

Most of the Spanish characters are input from the keyboard with a single stroke. A two key com 

bination is used for accent and dieresis marks above vowels. Traditional typewriter machines

used a 'dead key' system with keys that would strike the paper without advancing the carriage to

the next character. Typing on a computer keyboard simulates this behavior, typing the accent or

dieresis key does not produce any visible output until a vowel is typed afterwards. Usually if the

accent or dieresis key is followed by a consonant, the accent key is ignored. Accented or dieresis

characters cannot be used for shortcut keys for selecting options.

The words for Yes and No are Si (the character next to S is 'i' with acute accent) and No. We would

commonly use the S and N keys for a Si/No choice.

Spanish keyboards usually allow for typing not only the Spanish accent signs, but also the ac 

cent signs in French and other languages (grave accent, circumflex accent, umlaut on letters other

than the u). Other character that is typically available is the cedilla C (that looks like a C with

a comma underneath, used for Catalan, Portuguese and French words, for example). There is a

Latin American keyboard layout that does not contain the grave accent and the cedilla C.

5.2.10 More Detailed Discussions

Sorting

Traditional Spanish considered the combinations CH and LL individual single letters. For usage

in computers, this required an additional effort for sorting and character counting algorithms.

It was decided that the savings in not requiring special algorithms was significant enough and

that it would be acceptable to treat them as 2 separate letters. Some software that already had

incorporated the special sorting algorithms now allows for choosing between 'Traditional Spanish

Sort' and 'Modern Spanish Sort'.

Accents and dieresis are ignored for sorting purposes. The only exception is the rare case where

two words are exactly the same and the accent is the only difference, the word with the unaccented

character should be sorted first. E.g., camion (c a m i o with acute accent n), camionero, este, este

(e with acute accent s t e).