Typing vowels with macrons

[Kent Frazier]

On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 07:06:54 +0100, Pierfrancesco Caci <pf at caci.it> wrote:
> :-> "Kent" == Kent Frazier <kentfrazier at gmail.com> writes:
> 
>     > Hello all.
>     > I am a student of languages, and I need to be able to produce the
>     > accented characters of the languages I study.  The international
>     > layout works for most of these, but I am studying Latin, and I need to
>     > be able to produce vowels with macrons.
> 
> Vale :-)

Gratias ago.  Vale tibi etiam. (not sure if that's really grammatical,
but whatever)

> 
>     > Does anyone on here know of a way I can create vowels with macrons (a
>     > solid line over the vowel, e.g. āēīōū) under Linux/Gnome short of
>     > using character map?  The international layout with deadkeys does not
>     > have a way to do this as far as I am aware.
> 
> You must define a key to act as a compose key. I'm not on ubuntu right
> now so my memory will sure give you an incorrect result, but you get a
> start.

OK, I set it up to use the left Win key.  This is a very useful tool,
thank you for pointing it out.
 
> Find the keyboard property configurator in the "computer" menu,
> click on the "layout options" tab, expand the multiple choices in the
> right panel that start with "compose". Add one of them to the left
> panel. I usually choose the "menu" key, or the right alt if I don't
> have those useless windows keys on the keyboard.
> 
> To use it, you press and release in sequence the compose key and the
> letters you want to combine. I don't remember right now the sequence
> to generate macron, but you get the full list in
> 
> /usr/share/keymaps/include/compose.latin.inc.gz

I checked out this file, and I am not sure why but many of the
combinations it listed were incorrect.  When I would type them, I
would get something else.  For instance it says:

compose '.' 'C' to 'Å'

in fact, it gives you Ċ, which makes a lot more sense.  Furthermore,
many of the combinations do not actually output anything (other than a
beep from my system speakers.)  Do you know if there is a more
accurate list out there?  Also, I could not find macrons anywhere in
the file, nor could I find them by experimenting around.

- + vowel, which I expected to yield the macronized vowels, instead
created vowels with tildes, such as ã.

If anyone out there happens to know how to use compose to insert
macrons, please do tell.

Thanks again.

Kent