Making unicode characters on a US keyboard

[Johnny Rosenberg]

2013/12/16 Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com>

> On 16 December 2013 04:30, Kevin O'Gorman <kogorman at gmail.com> wrote:
> > In some OSen there's a way to make arbitrary characters, even on a
> > limited keyboard.
> >
> > Right now I'm wanting to use some of the characters from Latin-1 in
> > chat rooms that have no special provision for this, and I only have a
> > USA keyboard.  I can cut-and-paste the characters, but that's super
> > clumsy.  I like to keep my fingers in one spot.
> >
> > Is there a way to do this on Linux?
> >
> > I'm on Xubuntu 13.04, if it matters.
>
>
> Enable the Compose key. Learn some of the common combinations -
> they're mostly self-explanatory, such as 'e' + '=' -> '€' or 'y' + '='
> -> '¥'.
>
> This is trivial under GNOME and Unity. I know that Lubuntu does not
> have the option at all; Xubuntu may not either.
>
> It can be done from the shell using XModmap but it's tricky to get working.
>

I created my own layout by editing the evdev files. That works perfectly
but it was a bit tricky too. I failed a couple of times before the success…
Now I edit the layout with a spreadsheet (Apache OpenOffice Calc) and a
macro creates some of the files for me. I didn't finish all the macros, but
the most important ones work and I have to do the rest manually… and a
script helps me to install it. But it works…! I can type arrow symbols with
my arrow keys, using AltGr (the right Alt key on US keyboards, I think),
with or without Shift! Almost every key has four different symbols and I
even removed all the numbers on the first row (having them on the num-pad
is enough for me) so I can now type things like ”#@%&/()” without the Shift
key…

Anyway, if not creating a custom layout, I think the compose key is a good
choice. One advantage is that the character combinations are somewhat
logical. Compose o c → ©, for instance. Some characters need thrre
character combinations:
- - . → – (n-dash)
- - - → — (m-dash)

I prefer using my Caps Lock key for Compose. It's a very annoying key, but
thanks to the compose thing, it's suddenly useful again! And no more
CAPITAL LETTERS BY MISTAKE… :P

There is a list of all possible combinations out there. Use your favourite
internet search engine…



Johnny Rosenberg



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