easily/safely type unicode characters?

[Erik Christiansen]

On Mon, Sep 01, 2008 at 12:14:16PM -0400, Carlo Nyto wrote:
> I can't be the only person who uses ubuntu primarily for English with
> a US keyboard, but wants to be able to type foreign words naturally
> and without causing strange interactions because of unnecessary
> overloading of commonly used keys.

True. In my case, it's Danish and German, primarily for emails, but
occasionally for translation of documents. Vim's digraphs have met all
my needs faultlessly. They're there for Spanish too.

> I also can't be the only person who wants the same keyboard sequence
> to produce the same characters in every application.

Could be. I'm having trouble imagining what other application I'd need
for text. Email is composed in vim within mutt, and bulk text for
openoffice is typed in vim, then imported for final "fontifying fooffery".

Still, any encoding within X, which significantly reduces keystrokes, is
a worthy alternative to digraphs. (The only such encoding I use is to
put <escape> on the <caps_lock> key, because the original key is
microscopic and distant on most laptops.)

Erik