Hello all, This is the opposite of an offer to present something. Rather, I am hoping there is enough interest such that one of GTALUG' s more learned souls might be able to present. Specifically, keyboards. 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? If the answer is RTFM, I happily withdraw the request so long as someone can suggest an FM to R. My efforts to find decent docs on any of this have not gone well. So either a pointer to a good tutorial-level explanation of all this, or a brief mini-presentation at the next GTALUG meeting by someone who knows this stuff, would be highly appreciated. Thanks! -- Evan Leibovitch Toronto, Canada Em: evan at telly dot org Sk: evanleibovitch Tw: el56
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
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
On Sat, Sep 2, 2017 at 11:33 AM, Evan Leibovitch via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
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.
Greetings
Very very interesting - - - especially as I'm multi-lingual. I too have used the change the whole keyboard trick but that's a nuisance because then I have to 'think' about the typing as sometimes even the letter keys move (so much for touch typing at that point). What I am curious about the other letters that are part of the different alphabets. The Germanic languages definitely have at least some. I'm not familiar enough with the Eastern European languages but then I would likely not be touch typing so the entire keyboard switch would likely work. Thank for the question Evan - - - and some answers, thank you Blaise for your impetus and answers. Now for more of the story - - - - (I'm listening - - - grin! ) Dee
On 2017-09-02 12:33 PM, Evan Leibovitch via talk wrote:
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.
Sun keyboards had it second from the right in the bottom row. It even had a light to show when it was active. So the correct key should really be (Windows) Menu key on most modern keyboards. But I use Right Alt on all of my machines for the ⎄ function because I use Right Alt on all of my machines for it. It's possible to get a bit carried away with Compose key customization. I used to base my systems on this - https://github.com/kragen/xcompose - but it's got waaay too complex. I can never remember how to get the higher-level <Multi_key> keys to trigger. Do any distros enable the Compose key by default? It's a shame if they don't, as otherwise we're left without typographic quotes and dashes, easy fractions (⎄ 1 2 → ½) and a bunch of other handy characters like ¢, µ and £. Stewart
participants (4)
-
Blaise Alleyne -
Evan Leibovitch -
o1bigtenor -
Stewart C. Russell