Since Mac OS Lion, default "press and hold" of keyboard keys brings an easy access to accents and special characters:
However, who designed the order of elements in these lists is CLEARLY NOT using them with enough frequency*. Depending with what vowel you invoke this tool, the order of diacritical mark is different:
a à á â ä æ ã å ā
e é ë ê è ē ė ę
i î ï í ī į ì
o ô ö ò ó œ ø ō õ
u û ü ù ú ū
Just reordering the common set makes it usable:
a á à â ä ā | æ ã å
e é è ê ë ē | ė ę
i í ì î ï ī | į
o ó ò ô ö ō | œ ø õ
u ú ù û ü ū |
From now on:
1 | acute ( ´ )
2 | grave ( ` )
3 | circumflex ( ˆ )
4 | diaeresis ( ¨ )
5 | macron ( ¯ )
Note: Given that tilde is not present regularly I left it out from the reordering.
You can get this on your Mac putting fKeyboard-en.plist in /System/Library/Input Methods/PressAndHold.app/Contents/Resources/Keyboard-en.plist, or simply use this:
sudo curl -o "/System/Library/Input Methods/PressAndHold.app/Contents/Resources/Keyboard-en.plist" https://gist.githubusercontent.com/fbeeper/cf748159f5ac11fa9ff8/raw/fKeyboard-en.plist && sudo chmod 644 "/System/Library/Input Methods/PressAndHold.app/Contents/Resources/Keyboard-en.plist"
* I was deeply frustrated to write in Catalan and Spanish everyday before this change :P