Alt+xxx characters

[Rick]

Rick wrote:

>> 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
>
>   
My bad. It does work. I was overconfident, and didn't read the 
instructions. Maybe the functioning has changed. Anyway, the Palette 
works fine.
Rick

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