h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

On my page? Oh I found that after I posted.

Thanks for finding all that!

, or

You're welcome - bitteschön!

Bossel - what is the code for "ß"?

Haha, I laughed. She's trying to get us at it. How could she ...
but then I tried cut & paste: "ß"
Perhaps if we change language in the pc defaults or configuration ....

Well, as to the double s (or ß), Alt-225 will do the job (and bring up the same character as the greek 'beta'.

I think it was Loonytunes who found out that it's a difference if
you type Alt-0xyz or Alt-xyz alone. The first is being interpreted as ANSI Code, whereas the other is ASCII-Code. And as ASCII is only defined up to 255, there's obviously some wrap-around involved which is responsible for the multiple choices. I'm going to figure that out (after sobering up a bit...)

If you are running WinNT (and Windows 2000, etc.) you can go into settings/control panel/regional settings. On the input locales tab just add German(standard). After you OK it, you'll get a blue [EN] in the tray. Click on it and you can choose between EN and DE.

You might have to peck around for the characters

ä is where ' normally is
ö is where ; normally is
ü is where [ normally is
ß is where - normally is
Shifted, you get capitals (but not for the ß of course).

There are a few other surprises - like the () are shifted left by one key.

Zou'll also find that the Z and Y are switched - just like on a German kezboard (oops).

And the commas? as well as the rest of punctuation marks << all have switched places: #biggrin*

And for my next trick....

You could get a keyboard from Germany. But I never get used to the Y and Z being transposed.

In reality, I either use ae, oe, etc. and leave it, or I write it that way, flip the locale and do a search and replace when I'm done if I'm writing a long email to German friends.

... (continued from somewhere else...) There IS a wrap-around in going through Alt-xyz sequences! You only need to add 256, or multiples thereof, to any ASCII number to yield the same character.
Hence,
'ä' is ALT-132, and ALT388, and ALT644, and ALT900

http://www.h2g2.com/F54936?thread=96483 Just Zis Guy has offered a list of umlaut codes, too. I couldn't be bothered to compare them, but I expect they're the same. This was just to complete the collection of information.

And here is the official page on the subject, that my attention has just been drawn to:

http://www.h2g2.com/A266951