easily/safely type unicode characters?

[Florian Diesch]

"Carlo Nyto" <carlonyto at gmail.com> wrote:

> I have the occasional need to type unicode characters. It is rare
> enough that I don't want to change my keyboard to a foreign mapping
> and deal with the strange (and dangerous on the command-line)
> side-effects.  But it is often enough that the character map is a pain
> to use. (although it has been a lifesaver, as I can find no other
> reiable solution)
>
> What is my best solution for a way to enter those characters needed to
> spell correctly in German and Spanish using only the keyboard, but
> without using keyboard settings that produce surprising results? Of


It depends on what you mean by "surprising results": If you select one
of the international variants of the US layout you get a rightAlt-X
syntax for international characters, e.g. rightAlt-Q for ä.

A more general approach is to define a so-called Compose key, e.g. by
using the "Layout options" in the Gnome keyboard layout dialog. With
that you can use Compose, X, Y to type extended characters,
e.g. Compose " a for ä. There are predefined sequences for the most
common characters (but I don't know any list - you have to try) and
you can define your own sequences in ~/.XCompose, see 
<https://trac.aellaweil.de/ideen/wiki/XCompose>



   Florian
-- 
<http://www.florian-diesch.de/>
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