Thank you thank you thank you, Blaise. The links you offered eventually led me to the 2008 page that actually explained things most clearly to me <https://cyberborean.wordpress.com/2008/01/06/compose-key-magic/>. It's not limited to GNOME, I've happily implemented it under KDE. Now I don' t need to switch layouts or rely on dead keys.
I've mapped the Compose key to Right-CTRL and all is good. (tried mapping to "menu" but I think that's hardwired to a function and wasn't mappable.) I also find that the Linux equivalent to the Windows Alt-code trick (ALT+0XXX to give any Unicode character) has an equivalent on Linux (Ctl-Shift-U) but it doesn't work reliably on all apps. I have no idea why this is. But no matter. Most of what I want can now be done easily using my newly-mapped Compose key. Guess it can't be a standard location because there is still a diversity of hardware keyboard layouts out there. In any case, thanks again. I leave it to the GTALUG organizers whether this topic merits a tutorial at a meeting. - Evan On 2 September 2017 at 04:17, Blaise Alleyne via talk <[email protected]> wrote: > On 02/09/17 04:07 AM, Evan Leibovitch via talk wrote: > > [...] I have never quite mastered how to get random > > Unicode characters from a keyboard on a Linux desktop. I've allways been > > able to switch keyboards, and I can do French (and some other) accents > > using dead keys. But I've never been able to duplicate the Windows trick > > of (for instance) ALT-0128 to get the Euro symbol. > > > > Most keyboards these days, in addition to Control keys, have a pair each > > Windows and Alt keys. On my KDE desktop the Windows key brings up the > > applications menu - fine. But if I look at > > /usr/share/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose I see references to a > > <Multi_key>that would allow me to combine keystrokes to make ligatures > > (such as combining "R" and "=" to make the Rupee symbol. I don' t see a > > key marked "multi key" and I haven't found the ability to do these > > combined characters. > > > > In the KDE keyboard settings there is mention of mapping a <Meta> key to > > one of the low-row keyboard keys ... but isn't that an EMACS thing? And > > what is a <Hyper> key? > > > > In GNOME, the trick is called the Compose key. > > https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-help/stable/tips-specialchars.html.en > > You set a compose key in the GNOME settings (I like to set it as > CapsLock personally), and hit that key and then a combination of other > characters to get special characters. > > I haven't done this in KDE before, but a quick web search suggests that > it might also be called the Compose Key in KDE: > https://userbase.kde.org/Tutorials/ComposeKey > > HTH > > Blaise > --- > Talk Mailing List > [email protected] > https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk > -- Evan Leibovitch Toronto, Canada Em: evan at telly dot org Sk: evanleibovitch Tw: el56
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