> How do I type these sort of characters in Linux: � � ? It can all be done, but will cost you a few hours of work. The workarounds (like Jason's: pick a character by clicking on it) all don't cut it if you need to do it more than once.
You can easily go into KDE's national setup and select any number of keyboard mappings to be used. There's a little country-flag icon in the KDE panel which selects any country's keyboard by a simple click. This however changes the whole keyboard behaviour such that it behaves as if you had a keyboard connected which has the physical key layout used by the country concerned. This is usually useless in practice because if you have an American keyboard (i.e. New Zealand), which behaves like a XYZ keyboard, you can type all sorts of fancy characters straight away, but you're typing blind. Not much good. There are 2 ways of doing it, I generally set up both because some apps sometimes only understand one of them. 1) Use the compose key feature of X11. You press the compose key, and 2 further keys, all 3 in sequence, which gives you a new character. E.g. compose-"-a give �. You need: A compose key. Pick any unused key on your keyboard, and remap it to compose. I used R-menu (on a MS natural keyboard). The X symbolic key name for compose is Multi_key. The program to do the mapping is xmodmap, create a file ~/.Xmodmap and enter: keycode 117 = Multi_key You must find out the keycode number yourself, by running xev, moving the mouse into it, and pressing the R-menu key. It shows the 117, perhaps in hex, or whatever number you get. On login, run xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap. Your system should in fact already do this for you if the file exists. The compose key sequence are defined in some X11 file, which seems to be /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/locale/*/Compose so it's different for each locale (which is very sensible). You could presumably hack that file to your liking, maybe there can be per-user compose file too (let me know if so). Gotchas: KDE saves the key mapping on exit, and restores it on login. This can make key mappings quite dynamic and a pain to track (as in which system part does what). You get funny results if your .Xmodmap causes errors. You can specify keys in .Xmodmap by either their keycode or there current symbolic key name. The keycode is hardware-dependent(!!), the current keysym name is, yeah, heck knows what. Choose your poison. 2) Use X11's mode-shift feature, i.e. while holding down some key, your non-shifted and shifted layout changes. This is also set up with xmodmap. Example for German (xmodmap -pke to display): ! define the additional key symbols for shifted mode keycode 0x1E = u U udiaeresis Udiaeresis keycode 0x20 = o O odiaeresis Odiaeresis keycode 0x26 = a A adiaeresis Adiaeresis keycode 0x27 = s S ssharp section keycode 26 = e E EuroSign ! column 1 and 2 from US keyboard, 3 and 4 from German with mode shifted keycode 10 = 1 exclam onesuperior exclamdown keycode 11 = 2 at twosuperior oneeighth keycode 12 = 3 numbersign threesuperior sterling keycode 13 = 4 dollar onequarter currency keycode 14 = 5 percent onehalf threeeighths keycode 15 = 6 asciicircum threequarters fiveeighths keycode 16 = 7 ampersand braceleft seveneighths keycode 17 = 8 asterisk bracketleft trademark keycode 18 = 9 parenleft bracketright plusminus keycode 19 = 0 parenright braceright degree keycode 52 = z Z guillemotleft less keycode 53 = x X guillemotright greater keycode 54 = c C cent copyright keycode 55 = v V leftdoublequotemark grave keycode 56 = b B rightdoublequotemark apostrophe So for �, press modeshift-u (using modeshift like a ctrl-key), or modeshift-shift-u for �. Columns 1 and 2 (to the right of the "=") in the lines above are already there (or you couldn't type ;) ), you need to add columns 3 and 4. Hunt /usr/X11R6/ for a file which tells you the symbolic names to use. You also need to set up the mode-shift key. As that's a modifier key, you need to change the modifier map (xmodmap -pm to display): mod4 Super_L (0x73), Mode_switch (0x74) The symbol you need is Mode_switch, and you add it to any of the mod1..5 positions. It doesn't seem to matter if it's not on a line on its own (at least I don't know what the Super_L does). Put into .Xmodmap something like keycode 116 = Mode_switch add Mod5 = Mode_switch which turns the R-windows key into the mode-shift key. Gotchas: You can remove key symbols from modifiers, but it's an error if the modifier doesn't have the symbol on it. If you create any error in ~/.Xmodmap, the whole file is ignored. That's why it's important to know what state your system comes up in. To fully test your configuration, you need to quit out of X completely, because the default X11 kay mapping and the changes to it by e.g. KDE and you all determine final result. Volker -- Volker Kuhlmann is possibly list0570 with the domain in header http://volker.dnsalias.net/ Please do not CC list postings to me.
