Rubin Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > So... I probably should know this, but... > In my last post, I used an accented character. I use KDE as my desktop > and Evolution 2.10 for email, and I spent about 10 minutes trying to > figure out how to *type* that accented character from my laptop > keyboard, and finally gave up. I ended up cheating by cutting and > pasting that character from a web page! So... how does one type, on a > regular US laptop keyboard, without restarting X, an accented character? > (Dons flameproof suit in anticipation of tons of "You dummy, I can't > believe you don't know how to do that!" responses)
The short answer (assuming a standard Microsoft-key'ed keyboard): In KDE's equivalent of GNOME's Keyboard applet, enable "Menu key is Compose", then hit: <Menu> <'> <e> in sequence to get an é. <http://blogs.gnome.org/simos/2008/01/30/improving-input-method-support-in-gtk-based-apps/> is a good recent post with the topic as per the url, there. :) There's different input methods; I think there's roughly 4 ways: the X Input Method (XIM), SCIM, and each of Qt and GTK have their own input method support; I'm sure there're others, too. I seem to have gravitated toward using the XIM. Most of the multi-key sequences are defined in /usr/share/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose (adjust for $LANG). But at some point you might find it lacking. Then, you'll want to create a file called ~/.XCompose, that starts with: include "%L" …to pull in the locale-default compose rules, but to which you can extend your own, like: <Multi_key> <less> <3> <w> : "♡" U2661 # white heart suit <Multi_key> <less> <3> <b> : "♥" U2665 # black heart suit <Multi_key> <colon> <parenright> : "☺" # :) <Multi_key> <colon> <parenleft> : "☹" # :( <Multi_key> <period> <period> <period> : "…" <Multi_key> <exclam> <question> : "‽" # interrobang‽ <Multi_key> <question> <exclam> : "‽" # 2007-12-16, jsled <Multi_key> <p> <i> : "π" U03C0 # pi! # 2008-01-03, jsled <Multi_key> <backslash> <slash> : "ƛ" U19B # lambda. # 2008-01-22, jsled <Multi_key> <backslash> <slash> : "√" U221A # square rt <Multi_key> <3> <slash> : "∛" U221B # cube root <Multi_key> <8> <8> : "∞" U221E # infinity Note that here you need only to restart applications (not all of X) to get them to reinit changes to ~/.XCompose; I often edit ~/.XCompose in emacs, then fire up 'gedit's on the console to gauge the effect before restarting emacs, xchat, firefox, &c. -- ...jsled http://asynchronous.org/ - a=jsled; b=asynchronous.org; echo [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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