I don’t usually use a German keyboard on my Mac, but I use the international layout that allows us to input some of the language-specific characters using the Option key. Usually on most text boxes, Option + s will produce the ß character, but for some reason, it doesn’t work when doing the exercises on the ClozeMaster website. Other combinations work, so I can get characters like ç, ø or ¨ for the umlauts.
I usually resort to having to reach for my mouse to click on the ß button on the interface, but it’s getting a bit annoying. Am I the only one that’s experiencing this?
I haven’t managed to test it on a Windows machine, but when I try to use a Bluetooth keyboard on my iPhone, I get the same behaviour as my Mac on the web interface (it works perfectly in the ClozeMaster iOS app).
Strange, because it definitely doesn’t work for me. I’ve tried it on both Qwerty and Dvorak layouts, and I can’t input the letter ß with the Option + S key, and it’s only in the text input box when doing an exercise. Everywhere else works, including in this forum.
EDIT: to add, I also tried it on both Safari and Chrome.
Unfortunately, on the Mac the shortcut hotkeys (for functionality such as Option + H for hint, Option + P for “show multiple choice” etc.) override the default behaviour of the international keyboard binding of the letter ß using Option + S.
If you are using those shortcut hotkeys, then Option + S is mapped to sentence search. Now you don’t actually notice this when you’re trying to enter the letter ß, because the sentence search functionality only works after you’ve entered the close and pressed return, but the key binding is there nonetheless even though it doesn’t do anything.
Therefore, you have three choices -
Switch off the shortcut hotkeys, which will re-enable the Option + S binding to map to producing the letter ß
Switch on the accent shortcuts as well as the shortcut hotkeys, which will give you back the Option + S, but can get a bit confusing occasionally (e.g. if you like to type in the answer again after you’ve completed a close, then Option + S will now give you the ß letter, but also open the sentence search dialogue)
Keep all of the shortcut hotkeys and use a slightly more awkward method for entering ß
Choice number 2 should probably be fine for most people.
In the Game Settings (click on the little cog wheel symbol when playing a sentence) you have the two option settings, accent shortcuts and shortcut hotkeys.
Set them both to enabled to give choice number 2 as described above.
For choice number 3, @sindaco offered the following suggestion a couple of years ago in a related discussion about key binding issues in Polish -
This suggestion is to long-press on S, and then when the little menu for the selection of s-type characters comes up you press 1. This is indeed a little bit more awkward than hitting Option + S, but it only gives a slight delay and it means that you still don’t have to lift your fingers from the keyboard.
In fact, I use a similar method on my Windows machine using Microsoft Power Toys in order to enter some Turkish characters for which there are no bindings on the International keyboard, e.g. ş, ğ, ı.
