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LOCATION: Basic Setup » ANGEL 7.1

Foreign Languages in ANGEL 7.1

These instructions explain how to post non-English content in Penn State's Course Management System ANGEL 7.1.

This Page

  1. Western European Accents
    1. HTML Editor
    2. Accent Codes
    3. If Students See ??? Instead of Accents
    4. HTML Entity Codes
  2. Non-Western Languages
    1. Non-English Keyboards in Firefox, Mozilla, or Internet Explorer 7
    2. Editing Numeric Codes in the HTML Editor

Western European Accents

These techniques should be used with Western European languages such as Spanish, Italian, French, German and Portuguese.

HTML Editor

The HTML Editor allows ANGEL users to insert common foreign language letters and symbols by clicking the Insert Latin (Æ) button.

screen capture of Insert Latin button along with Insert Math buttons
Character insertion buttons: Math, Greek and accented letters. Click Æ for accents.

This tool is available for use with multi-line text areas in many locations in ANGEL, including Add a Page, syllabus fields, and course mail and discussion forum message composing screens.See the HTML Editor: Insert Special Characters help topic for detailed instructions.

Student Access to the HTML Editor

Students have access to the HTML Editor in several locations:

The HTML Editor is not available to students taking a fill-in the-blank quiz, but accent codes can be used instead.

Accent Codes

Students in courses for Western European languages or basic algebra can use accent codes to insert accented letters when the HTML Editor is not available.

A list of accent codes is available at:
http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/international/accents/index.html

If Students See ??? Instead of Accents

If students or instructors see "???" instead of an accent, they may need to switch encoding to Western/ISO-8859-1/Latin-1. To switch encodings.

Firefox/Safari/Internet Explorer 5-6

  1. In the browser, go to the View menu go to Character Encoding (Firefox), Encoding (Internet Explorer) or Text Encoding (Safari).
  2. Select the option for Western (ISO-8859-1) [Firefox] Western European [Internet Explorer] or Western (ISO Latin 1) [Safari].

Internet Explorer 7

  1. Click the Tools (gear wheel) icon beneath the search box, then select Toolbars then Classic Menu.
  2. A new set of menu options should appear including a View menu should appear beneath the URL text box.
  3. Under the View menu, select Encoding » Western European.

See detailed instructions with screen captures.

HTML Entity Codes

Instructors can also HTML entity codes such as ñ for ñ to minimize viewing incompatibilities.

Note: These codes can be used everywhere EXCEPT fill-in-the blank quizzes. If incompatabilites arise, make sure both the instructor and student are viewing ANGEL in Western European/ISO-8859-1/Latin 1 encoding.

Non-Western Languages

These techniques should be used with Asian, Cyrillic, Middle Eastern, or Classical languages.

Non-English Keyboards in Firefox, Mozilla, or Internet Explorer 7

If an instructor or student needs to input content in another script, such as Cyrillic, East Asian characters, Arabic, or Hebrew, then use the following steps.

  1. Open ANGEL in the Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape 7/8, or Internet Explorer 7 browser (this technique will not work with other browsers or Internet Explorer 5/6 or Safari).
  2. Switch your input keyboard from English to appropriate script. See the By Language page for details for your language.
  3. Begin to type in the language within ANGEL; the appropriate characters will appear in ANGEL. This method works for both an ANGEL discussion forum and chat room.

    Note: This works both inside and outside the HTML Editor.

    Students can view the content with Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari, Firefox, or Netscape/Mozilla.

Editing Numeric Codes in the HTML Editor

If you enter edit mode in some tools, you will see that the browser converted the typed text to the Unicode numeric escape characters (e.g., Д for Cyrillic Д). See the By Language page for details for your language's numeric codes.

To edit the numeric codes

  1. Make sure the numeric codes are in a field which links to the HTML Editor.
  2. Open the HTML Editor. The codes will be displayed as the appropriate letters.
  3. Type with the non-English keyboard, then select Accept Changes. The edited text will be displayed as numeric characters.
  4. Copy and paste the numeric characters to other fields as needed.

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This Web page maintained by Teaching and Learning with Technology, a unit of Information Technology Services. For questions or comments on this Web page, please contact Elizabeth J. Pyatt (ejp10@psu.edu).
Unicode character names and hexadecimal entity codes are taken from the public Unicode Character Charts.
Last Modified: Tuesday, 03-Jul-2007 10:21:04 EDT