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. 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
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Evan Leibovitch

Toronto, Canada

Em: evan at telly dot org
Sk: evanleibovitch
Tw: el56