This small tips explain the following topics:

• how to be able to type accented characters on the Cygwin command prompt (dear french users this one is for you...).
• how to clear the screen AND the scrollback in mintty
  

First of all, Cygwin is a way to have Linux/Unix tools on Windows, for more information see the Cygwin website.

Accented characters

The problem with Cygwin is that when it runs on a computer with french settings and keyboard you can't type any accented characters. Here follows the solution I found on the University of Montreal website:

1. Launch cygwin.
2. Type cd.
3. Type vi .inputrc
4. When vi is launched, type [a] (the 'a' key) and type the following lines:
   
   set meta-flag on
   set convert-meta off
   set output-meta on
   
5. Type [ESC] and :wq followed by [Enter]
6. Restart cygwi

Clear the screen in mintty

A common task using cygwin is to clear the screen AND the scrollback of mintty, one can do it by adding the following alias

alias cls='echo -e "\ec\e[3J"'