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Posts by filmstudent  

Joined: 4 Jul 2012 / Male ♂ 		Last Post: 20 Aug 2014
Threads: Total: 4 / In This Archive: 3
Posts: Total: 5 / In This Archive: 5 		From: USA, Baltimore
Speaks Polish?: Uczę się polskiego
Interests: film, theater, photography

Displayed posts: 8
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filmstudent   
4 Jul 2012
Study / Film study in Poland [5]

Merged: PWSFTViT - National Film School in £ódź

I'm taking the entrance exam to PWSFTViT in a couple months. I'm curious if there are any members here who are familiar with the school?
filmstudent   
20 Jun 2013
Life / Cost of Visiting Sleep Clinic in Poland? [3]

Hello....I'm studying in £ódź. At the moment I'm visiting family back in the states, and going back to £ódź in August. I have no health care coverage whatsoever. Pretty sure I have sleep apnea, "bezdech senny". It looks like it's going to be crazy expensive to get tested for this in the U.S., let alone treatment, so I'm wondering if anyone has any idea what lab tests and treatment in Poland when you're paying 100% out of pocket? And the cost of CPAP or APAP if I end up needing those? I emailed mfzaar.pl to ask if they could help me, but thought I'd ask here in case anyone knew.

Even a rough estimate on being diagnosed and tested with anything else would be helpful, I have no idea what the costs are over there. It seemed like in general it would be more affordable, but I can't seem to find any information on it, and haven't met anyone who knew.

Thanks!
filmstudent   
18 Aug 2014
Language / Polish keyboard incompatibility issues [11]

I'm wondering if there's a solution or a workaround for this. I'm an American studying in Poland, using a Windows 7 laptop bought in the US with the Polish Programmers keyboard layout installed. I use te Alt + key combinations for Polish characters, and it works fine most of the time, but every now and then I come across a situation where an application or website won't accept Polish characters this way (but supports them otherwise)

As an example--when I create flash cards on studyblue.com, ą ę ó ń ć ź and ż all work just fine using the appropriate Alt + keys. But when I try to type an ś with Alt +S, nothing happens. When I try to type a ł, a dot is displayed. So I have to have notepad open in the background, and copy/paste ś and ł as I need them. Both ś and ł are displayed correctly when they're pasted. Drives me crazy, and I've basically given up using StudyBlue because of it. Which is a shame, because I really like it otherwise.

Both Rosetta Stone's desktop software and the web-based equivelant don't support the Polish Programmers keyboard, forcing you to use their method with the ~ key. And a text-only distraction-free text editor I love using at writer.bighugelabs.com has keyboard commands that use the alt key. It does accept Polish characters when that feature is disabled, but a distracting "Keyboard shortcuts are disabled in settings" is displayed in the corner every time an alt key combination is used.

What bothers me is that in each of these three instances, the website and/or software support the characters themselves and will display them correctly--but they don't recognize them as being pressed, due to either ignoring any Alt key combinations altogether, interpreting alt combinations inconsistantly, or ignoring alt combinations altogether.

So I'm curious, what keyboard layout do Windows PCs use in Poland, and how are the Polish keys accessed? If it's with Alt + combinations, is there any way to circumvent faulty software/websites, so the text is fed in directly, without the software ever seeing that the Alt key was pressed? Or any ideas for a workaround?
filmstudent   
15 Nov 2014
Work / Poczta Polska equivelant of "c/o" (care of)? [4]

Does anyone know the Polish equivelant of the American abbreviation "c/o" when addressing mail? This is used when the recipient of a piece of mail isn't in a situation to reliably receive the mail--it autorizes the postman to deliver to a secondary recipient, who in turn delivers the mail to the final recipient. For example, "Batman, c/o Bruce Wayne" "Spider-man, c/o Peter Parker" "Lewis Carroll, c/o Charles Lutwidge Dodgson" etc.

Thanks!
filmstudent   
2 Nov 2015
Language / Polish keyboard incompatibility issues [11]

Merged: Typing em dash and low quotation marks?

I use the Polish programmers keyboard layout in Windows 7 which allows me to type most Polish characters just fine (ą, ę, ć, ł, etc) and I use Vistalizator to switch between U.S. and Polish language packs, which allows Windows to display system messages with Polish characters and for me to view/edit text documents containing Polish characters.

However, as far as I've been able to tell, neither allows me to directly type an em dash ( - ) or a double low-9 quotation mark ( " ) (as used in writing Polish dialogue). I can insert them manually using the Windows alt codes, though not every program supports this, and it also slows me down while I'm working. Some programs allow me to set up an autocorrect feature to fix this, but some don't--InDesign, for instance, doesn't allow special characters in autocorrect entries. My friends here in Poland are telling me they use the autocorrect feature in MS Word to circumvent this problem--so apparently even in Poland you can't type these characters directly from the keyboard? That seems odd to me, so I thought I'd ask here for ideas, maybe someone else here has ran into this before? Maybe there's a key combination I'm missing?

The best workaround I've found is a third party program called AutoHotKey... but still, this strikes me as something that would be built in to the keyboard layout or the Windows language pack--surely all of Poland isn't relying on autocorrect for this?

I found a solution, finally! For anyone else with this problem, the "Mocny Aksent" keyboard layout allows typing Polish letters with the right Alt key, as well as - and ". You just have to switch the keyboard layout from the taskbar every time you want to use it. It can be downloaded here

fonty.pl/sklep,20,gratisy.htm
filmstudent   
2 Nov 2015
Language / Polish keyboard incompatibility issues [11]

Mocny Akcent work the same way as programmers, in that you type the special characters by holding down right alt key--ie, for "ą" you type alt + a. For "-" you type alt + =, and for """ you type alt + ;

It just takes some getting used to... there's aother Polish keyboard layout I remember finding that did't require the alt key for accented characters, but I found that I was using more time learning the new layout than I was saving by not using the alt key. Once you grow accustomed to it the alt key becomes second nature.
filmstudent   
2 Nov 2015
Language / Polish keyboard incompatibility issues [11]

Interesting... does 214 allow you to type the em dash and lowered quotations? Most of what I'm doing is copy typing Polish books, which I then go through and type an interlinear word-for-word English translation, to help me with learning Polish. The perfectionist in me just wants to type the proper characters when I come across dialogue. I haven't found interlinear Polish/Englush books anywhere, only dual language books that translate the full meaning, not the individual words... and typing helps me absorb it more than reading anyway.