Alt+xxx characters

[Rick]

>
> There are a couple of ways to do it.  Since I often type in Spanish,
> which uses accented characters and the "~" over the n, I just pop open a
> terminal window and type
>
>   setxkbmap us_intl
>
> after which you can type the apostrophe and an e, and get the accented
> e.  If you want to go back, just type
>
>   setxkbmap us
>
> and you'll be back to vanilla ol' white-bread gringo mode.  :-)
>
> The other way is to run a program like KCharSelect.  It'll give you
> every character you want.  It's pointy-and-clicky, so it's slower than
> Alt-XXX, but it works.  KCharSelect comes as part of KDE, and IIRC,
> there's a similar program for GNOME desktops.
>
> --TP
>
>   
Now I'm really confused. I thought I understood the question and even 
had a solution. Now I find there are many different and to my mind 
cumbersome ways to address the problem. When I recently returned to 
Linux after a year or so absence, I straightaway installed language 
support for US English (already there), Hebrew and French. I then added 
the keyboard indicator to the bottom panel and the Character Palette at 
the top. That's what I've done in the last several releases of Ubuntu. I 
change keyboards (mapping) when I'm typing a word or more. I use the 
palette if it's only a single special character. In Windows I used alt + 
a four character string for those individual characters. The letter é is 
alt + 0233 (when the NumLock is on!). But when I just tried the Palette 
in 8.04, it didn't work. It's the first time I tried it since 
installation. I had to switch to the French keyboard to generate the e 
with an acute accent.
Rick

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