From time to time, I am asked how to produce from the keyboard special characters, such as, such as ä, é, å, ç, ß, and ñ, which occur in Western European languages. This is particularly a problem for people in the USA who use European languages other than English for e-mail correspondence and the like, since none of these characters are available on the standard US keyboard layout.

For Microsoft Windows operating systems, there is a simple solution; namely, the US-international keyboard configuration. While there are a number of web sites which provide explanations of how to set up and use this configuration, I have not found any of them to be complete and accessible to the non-expert user. Therefore, I have written a short note to explain exactly the steps one must go through to set up this configuration, as well as simple instructions on how to use it. This document has the following features:

• Step-by-step instructions on how to perform the installation.
• A fairly detailed explanation of how to use both the special shift mode and the prefix mode.
• A nice, color-coded keyboard image which shows exactly which keys to strike to achieve the desired result.
• The Postscript and PDF versions also include a full-page picture of this keyboard layout, which may be printed and placed near the keyboard for handy reference.

Here it is, in a number of formats:

• HTML_one_file
• HTML_by_section
• A4.ps.gz
• A4.pdf
• Letter.ps.gz
• Letter.pdf