Dear “lazyweb“,
How do I type all those funny European squiggles and dots on the mere 26-letter US keyboard on my Lenovo X61 laptop in Linux? Searching Google and copy-pasting found characters is getting old pretty quickly. The correct way to type these characters is not obvious.
If it involves special scripts and downloading configuration files, I am not interested. How would one of those normal, non-geek user do this? I’d like to know the proper way.
(For “bonus points”, typing a Euro sign would be great too.)
Thanks in advance,
Umlautless in Deutschland
Tags: Europe, foreign, Germany, GNOME, keyboard, lazyweb, Linux, umlauts
configure your keyboard to have one “Compose” key.
I map my compose key to the right alt, normally, but there are other otherwise useless keys on most keyboards…
Once you have done that, to type €, you press compose, then C and then =.
È is compose, ` and E, Ñ is compose, ~ and N, and so on.
ä = Alt+0228 (type on NumBlock)
ö = Alt+0246
ü = Alt+0252
ß = Alt+0223
Ä = Alt+0196
Ö = Alt+0214
Ü = Alt+0220
€ = Alt+0128
Under the keyboard prefs in gnome, under Layout Options, I have Compose Key Position set to “Right Ctrl is Compose”. Then I can type Right-ctrl squiggle-or-dots letter to produce a squiggly or dotty letter. As Luciano mentions, Right-ctrl = C produces €.
You can type the Euro symbol by holding down control and shift then typing “u20ac”. For infrequently used characters it might be workable, but Luciano’s solution is more efficient if you’ll be typing them lots.
[…] http://linuxart.com/log/archives/2008/02/01/squiggles-and-dots/ asks Hoosgot, […]
creative solution:
One small pot of acrylic paint, colour of your own choice
One fine paint brush suitable for models
gnome-keyboard-properties
gedit
🙂
The easiest way to do this is to add the US-International layout (or something that looks like it) – then you can type ‘a and get á, “a gives you ä, ~n gives ñ, etc. Right-alt and 1 gives ¡. There is a character map available (you must add the little panel applet for layout first) to find the others.
I for one sometime use GNOME’s Character palette. It is an applet that sits on the panel with a configurable selection of characters that are not present on the US Keyboard for instance. Once you click on the character, it is copied to the clipboard, you can then past it where you want. That’s pretty much how a mom can learn to do it lol
I have used several solutions over the years:
– Use a Compose key. In the past, I had to hack the X keyboard config or play with xmodmap and friends, but now it’s just a matter of going to Keyboard Preferences / Layout Options / Compose key position.
– Add the Character Palette applet to your panel. If you only need a small set of “strange characters” and you do no use them too frequently, then you can move the mouse to the panel from time to time and pick the character that you need. I usually define my own palette containing the characters that I use the most frequently, so that I can get them with a single mouse click instead of two.
– Use an old copy of emacs 20.x with the accents-mode, which worked a bit like a Compose key but without the compose key. 🙂 In practice, this was rather annoying because I had to remember to type a space after every quote character if I did not want it to be combined automatically with the following vowel to form an accented character.
Nowadays, I use a combination of Compose key and Character picker applet, depending on the computer I use and the characters I need.
If you live in that country, even if for a short time, you can add that language keyboard, learn it, and switch to it when you need to type something in that language. Punctuation often is in different places so you switch only for typing some words.
Lots of us in strange European countries do use US keyboards with our language keymaps, i.e. there are no local symbols on the physical keyboard, but we remember what is where.
€ is usually AltGr+Shift+E.
On polish layout to get “ü” I had to press RightAlt+[, release, and then press “u”. It called deadkey or something like that.
i for myself love the charpick applet for stuff like that, but probably it’s not faster than entering the letters by some keyboard combinations. Viel Vergnügen.
Hopefully this will be of use:
http://www.pixelbeat.org/docs/xkeyboard/
Using a US mac keyboard myself – for easier access to often used code characters.
Just make sure the layout in gnome-keyboard-properties is “USA International” or similar. Compose key gives you access to all kinds of weird symbols (i think xev recognizes it as ISO_LEVEL3_SHIFT).
If no key is set for this, in the advanced options for layout you can actually select what keys you “Third level choosers”
Yes this is horrendues horrible and craptastic. A lot of this should be defaults, and a lot of the keyboard layouts/options makes no sense. Took me years to figure this out.
I set the Windows key to Compose and Menu key to Super. This works on my Lenovo R60. You can do this in the GNOME keyboard preferences. Then you can type € by doing Compose-C-=. ä is Compose-“-a. All the settings can be seen in /usr/share/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose (on my Debian system).
I second the fist comment.
Configure right-Alt to compose. That’s what I have been doing. Gnome has a UI for that.
compose ” u makes ü
etc.
I use a custom layout, based on the us-intl layout. The us-intl layout lets you do everything you want to do already. You can customize it, though, if you wish, by modifying the following file:
/etc/X11/xkb/symbols/us
The us-intl layout has dead keys, so to type ” you would press “. To type über, you would type “uber. To type résumé, you would type r’esum’e. To type niño, you would type ni~no.
I also have some typographic keys mapped: the typographic quotes, the em dash, the en dash, the ellipsis, and others. You also get to type © (usually Right Alt+c), ¢ (Right Alt+C), and € (Right Alt+5).
You can change your layout if you use GNOME by using System→Preferences→Keyboard, under the Layouts tab. HTH!
In KDE, I turn on keyboards layouts, add the languages I use frequently (english, spanish, german) and a flag appears in the tray.
Clicking the flags switches across the layouts.
And the code for deadkey / composekey combinations comes from gtkimcontextsimple.c
For example, there are 4 lines giving combinations for the euro:
GDK_Multi_key, GDK_equal, GDK_C, 0, 0, 0x20AC, /* EURO_SIGN */
GDK_Multi_key, GDK_equal, GDK_e, 0, 0, 0x20AC, /* EURO_SIGN */
GDK_Multi_key, GDK_C, GDK_equal, 0, 0, 0x20AC, /* EURO_SIGN */
GDK_Multi_key, GDK_e, GDK_equal, 0, 0, 0x20AC, /* EURO_SIGN */
HTH
[…] asks how to type squiggles and dots in GNOME; that is, how to type characters such as á à ä ã â ą ȩ ę ő ǰ ǩ ǒ ġ ṅ ȯ ṁ […]
[…] friends, there’s a better way! In discovering the compose key (thanks to many awesome volunteers) a couple weeks ago, I’ve been happily typing not just […]
never used the compose key solution. Sounds like too many keystrokes for me. I’m too lazy for additional button pushing. I use the config below in my .Xmodmap to enable me to use the CAPSLOCK key as a mode key for special characters. For instance
CAPSLOCK-a = ä
CAPSLOCK-A = Ä
CAPSLOCK-s = ß
CAPSLOCK-w = á (for those spanish emails 😉
I never use capslock, and actually the xmodmap config keeps me from accidentally enabling capslock with my fat fingers.
<———-8
! Use Caps_Lock as Mode_switch key
!
clear Lock
clear Mod2
clear Mod3
! map capslock key to Mode_switch
keycode 66 = Mode_switch
!
! Enhance ASCII keyboard with international characters
!
keysym backslash = backslash bar aring Aring
keysym bracketleft = bracketleft braceleft ae AE
keysym bracketright = bracketright braceright oslash Ooblique
keysym comma = comma less cedilla guillemotleft
keysym equal = equal plus plusminus plusminus
keysym grave = grave asciitilde degree degree
keysym minus = minus underscore division notsign
keysym period = period greater periodcentered guillemotright
keysym slash = slash question exclamdown questiondown
keysym 0 = 0 parenright oacute Oacute
keysym 1 = 1 exclam onesuperior onequarter
keysym 2 = 2 at twosuperior onehalf
keysym 3 = 3 numbersign threesuperior threequarters
keysym 4 = 4 dollar eacute Eacute
keysym 6 = 6 asciicircum copyright registered
keysym 7 = 7 ampersand yacute Yacute
keysym 8 = 8 asterisk uacute Uacute
keysym 9 = 9 parenleft iacute Iacute
keysym a = a A adiaeresis Adiaeresis
keysym b = b B otilde Otilde
keysym c = c C ccedilla Ccedilla
keysym d = d D egrave Egrave
keysym e = e E ediaeresis Ediaeresis
keysym f = f F eth Eth
keysym g = g G thorn Thorn
keysym h = h H ucircumflex Ucircumflex
keysym i = i I idiaeresis Idiaeresis
keysym j = j J ugrave Ugrave
keysym k = k K igrave Igrave
keysym l = l L ograve Ograve
keysym m = m M mu mu
keysym n = n N ntilde Ntilde
keysym o = o O odiaeresis Odiaeresis
keysym p = p P ocircumflex Ocircumflex
keysym q = q Q acircumflex Acircumflex
keysym r = r R ecircumflex Ecircumflex
keysym s = s S ssharp section
keysym t = t T icircumflex Icircumflex
keysym u = u U udiaeresis Udiaeresis
keysym v = v V atilde Atilde
keysym w = w W aacute Aacute
keysym x = x X multiply multiply
keysym y = y Y ydiaeresis ydiaeresis
keysym z = z Z agrave Agrave
<———-8
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Squiggles and dots « Linuxart
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