Re: [PLUG] Entering extended characters in Linux

[Matthew Rosewarne <mrosewarne@inoutbox.com>]

On Friday 23 November 2007, Art Alexion wrote:
> This came up when I answered a question from a windows user at work.  In
> windows when I want to enter extended characters (e.g. "em-dash"), I hold
> down alt while typing the ascii code on the numpad (alt+0151).  This
> doesn't seem to work in Linux.  Is there a Linux equivalent?
>
> I have compose_key set up at home but can't seem to get it to work at the
> office.  I hate using gui grids for stuff I like to use all the time like,
> Ã and Â.

I use compose, but the problem I run into is the total lack of a decent 
sequence -> symbol table.  There's the file X11 
uses, /usr/share/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose, but that's hardly 
convenient.  If I had text-formatting skills of any merit, I would have made 
a webpage generator script for this, maybe someone could give it a try?

What's your XkbOptions on the work machine?  Or, if you're using some other 
method to set the compose key, you should probably use XkbOptions instead.


Besides compose, there's also "level 3" shift, which gives you access to some 
unusual characters as well as the "dead keys" for adding accents and such. To 
use it set your keyboard variant to "en_US" (not just "en"):
xorg.conf:
        Option          "XkbModel"      "pc104"
        Option          "XkbLayout"     "en_US"

By default, it uses right-alt as the level 3 shift, but you can change that.  
You can find the various compose or lvl3 options in 
/usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/base.lst

Once you change those settings and restart X, you should be able to see what 
characters you can type by running:

xkbprint -ll 3 :0

That will produce a postscript file you can look at in kghostview, xgv, or a 
similar app.


Might want to have a look at this site:
http://www.charvolant.org/~doug/xkb/html/index.html

If you're running KDE, you can find a GUI for much of this in the Control 
Centre, under "Regional & Accessibility" -> "Keyboard Layout".

%!PS: My ideal layout would be level3 on scroll lock and compose on 
pause/break, since those keys are both completely useless.  There's no easy 
way to set this, though.

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