Another way for French using a standard American English keyboard. Not better, but different.

I used Ukelele <http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=ukelele> to map the common ones to the same place as on a French keyboard. I'm a touch typist and know the English QWERTY keyboard, so switching to a French keyboard is "impossible", but with an extended keyboard (needed because the common diacriticals in French use lowercase upper row of keys), for example, I mapped the 2 key to é. The downside is I have to switch to my special keyboard to type French and remember to use the numeric keyboard for numbers. To take it a bit further I mapped other diacriticals to unused upper row keys.

PS Everything shows up fine in the post, so the person with a problem may have some kind font change/corruption problem. Just a guess.