[ale] accented characters

[Sean C. McCord]

On Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 08:46:10AM -0500, Jim Kinney wrote:
> My son wants to be able to insert accented characters in Fedora 10.
> The default character set is UTF-8 so it has the ability. But I don't
> see what it works in. I've tried gnome text editor, openoffice, and
> gnome terminal with no joy. It should work within all of gnome
> environment using the AltGr + foo sequence but I see nothing.
> 
> http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Accented_Characters
> http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Altering_or_Creating_Keyboard_Maps
> 
> So how is this wonderful capability used?

I just put the following in my .Xmodmap (and load it in .xinitrc or
.xsession with 'xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap'):

remove Lock  =  Caps_Lock
keycode 0x42 =  Multi_key       Mode_switch

This sets my CapsLock (which I always hated anyway) to be the Multi Key
or Compose key.

If I then hit, for instance, the sequence: <CAPS>, <'>, <a>, I get a
with an acute diacritic.  Various sequences exist, and they are usually
obvious. 

http://www.hermit.org/Linux/ComposeKeys.html

Also, when using vim, you can use <Ctrl>-K as a replacement for the CAPS
mapping.

--
Sean C. McCord
scmlist at cycoresys.com