Just a thought here, if John or Michael are reading - would it be in any way possible just to print a range of letters with various diacritics somewhere on the page for posting? Say something simply like: ÄËÖÜäëöüÁÉÓÚáéóúÀÈÒÙàèòùÂÊÔÛâêôûßçñ , so that posters can simply copy the letter they want from there (just by running the cursor over it, blocking it and pasting)?

We may have a problem here, John: I mailed a complete set of Greek and Cyrillic plus Roman variants just now, but despite the preview being fine, once it had arrived at the site and I accessed it again, much of it was mince.

Sorry,

Ron

also from Wiki:

Greek alphabet

Α α Alpha
Β β Beta
Γ γ Gamma
Δ δ Delta
Ε ε Epsilon
Ζ ζ Zeta
Η η Eta
Θ θ Theta
Ι ι Iota
Κ κ Kappa
Λ λ Lambda
Μ μ Mu
Ν ν Nu
Ξ ξ Xi
Ο ο Omicron
Π π Pi
Ρ ρ Rho
Σ σ ς Sigma
Τ τ Tau
Υ υ Upsilon
Φ φ Phi
Χ χ Chi
Ψ ψ Psi
Ω ω Omega

Also it's useful to list complete names that posters might need; from Wiki:

List of Czech composers

Hanuš Bartoň (1960-)
František Benda (1709-1786)
František Brixi (1732-1771)
Šimon Brixi (1693-1735)
Bohuslav Matěj Černohorský (1684-1742)
Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904)
Petr Eben (1929-)
Zdeněk Fibich (1850-1900)
Luboš Fišer (1935-1999)
Julius Fučík (1872-1916)
Alois Hába (1893-1973)
Jan Hanuš (1915-2004)
Vladimír Hirsch (1954-)
Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778-1837)
Ilja Hurník (1922-)
Karel Husa (1921-)
Miloslav Ištvan (1928-1990)
Leoš Janáček (1854-1928)
Otakar Jeremiáš (1892-1962)
Jaroslav Ježek (1906–1942)
Miloslav Kabeláč (1908-1979)
Viktor Kalabis (1923-2006)
Václav Kalous
Marek Kopelent (1932-)
Antonín Kraft (1749-1820)
Zdeněk Liška (1922-1983)
Bohuslav Martinů (1890-1959)
Adam Václav Michna z Otradovic (~1600-1676)
Josef Mysliveček (1737-1781)
Jan Novák (1921-1984)
Vítězslav Novák (1870-1949)
Jiří Pauer (1919-)
Antonín Rejcha (1770-1836)
Jakub Jan Ryba (1765-1815)
Jan Seidel (1908-1998)
Milan Slavicky (1947-)
Klement Slavický (1910-1999)
Bedřich Smetana (1824-1884)
Jan Václav Antonín Stamic (1717-1757)
Karel Stamic (1745-1801)
Josef Suk (1874-1935)
Otakar Ševčík (1852-1934)
Václav Trojan (1907-1983)
Antonín Tučapský (1928-)
František Ignác Tůma (1704-1774)
Jiří Válek (1923-)
Jan Křtitel Vaňhal (1739-1813)
Pavel Josef Vejvanovský (~1640-1693)
Pavel Vranický (1756-1808)
Antonín Vranický (1761-1820)
Jan Dismas Zelenka (1679-1745)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Czech_composers"

What, they've disowned "Krommer, Franz (originally Kramář, František Vincenc) (1759–1831)"?

I'm afraid I'm going to keep calling the Stamices Stamitzes...

For those with MS Word, might it not be simpler to compile messages requiring such characters in Word and use the symbol sets provided? - or am I missing something here?

Best,

Alistair

No, Word 97 and earlier versions are indeed devoid of this facility and even the one I use (which, being Word 2000, is itself way out of date now) does not have absolutely every such character that one might need to cover every conceivable trasliterative eventuality (perhaps the current version of Word does), but it does have many of them and is pretty useful in that regard; the only problem is that, as used once to be said by some of the music of Vaughan Williams, it doesn't travel well - in the sense that the reliability of some of them when changing format is somewhat compromised (hence the risk of "mince" referred to earlier).

Best,

Alistair

I did point that out on another thread, Andy, but was quickly reminded (a) that it doesn't work on a Mac; (b), and more importantly, that it's extremely fiddly if you're using a laptop with no separate numeric keypad (where it would involve a great deal of turning Num Lock on and off).