Thank you thank you thank you, Blaise. The links you offered eventually led me to the 2008 page that actually explained things most clearly to me <https://cyberborean.wordpress.com/2008/01/06/compose-key-magic/>. It's not limited to GNOME, I've happily implemented it under KDE. Now I don' t need to switch layouts or rely on dead keys. I've mapped the Compose key to Right-CTRL and all is good. (tried mapping to "menu" but I think that's hardwired to a function and wasn't mappable.) I also find that the Linux equivalent to the Windows Alt-code trick (ALT+0XXX to give any Unicode character) has an equivalent on Linux (Ctl-Shift-U) but it doesn't work reliably on all apps. I have no idea why this is. But no matter. Most of what I want can now be done easily using my newly-mapped Compose key. Guess it can't be a standard location because there is still a diversity of hardware keyboard layouts out there. In any case, thanks again. I leave it to the GTALUG organizers whether this topic merits a tutorial at a meeting. - Evan On 2 September 2017 at 04:17, Blaise Alleyne via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
On 02/09/17 04:07 AM, Evan Leibovitch via talk wrote:
[...] I have never quite mastered how to get random Unicode characters from a keyboard on a Linux desktop. I've allways been able to switch keyboards, and I can do French (and some other) accents using dead keys. But I've never been able to duplicate the Windows trick of (for instance) ALT-0128 to get the Euro symbol.
Most keyboards these days, in addition to Control keys, have a pair each Windows and Alt keys. On my KDE desktop the Windows key brings up the applications menu - fine. But if I look at /usr/share/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose I see references to a <Multi_key>that would allow me to combine keystrokes to make ligatures (such as combining "R" and "=" to make the Rupee symbol. I don' t see a key marked "multi key" and I haven't found the ability to do these combined characters.
In the KDE keyboard settings there is mention of mapping a <Meta> key to one of the low-row keyboard keys ... but isn't that an EMACS thing? And what is a <Hyper> key?
In GNOME, the trick is called the Compose key.
https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-help/stable/tips-specialchars.html.en
You set a compose key in the GNOME settings (I like to set it as CapsLock personally), and hit that key and then a combination of other characters to get special characters.
I haven't done this in KDE before, but a quick web search suggests that it might also be called the Compose Key in KDE: https://userbase.kde.org/Tutorials/ComposeKey
HTH
Blaise --- Talk Mailing List talk@gtalug.org https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
-- Evan Leibovitch Toronto, Canada Em: evan at telly dot org Sk: evanleibovitch Tw: el56