[GTALUG] Request for a talk (or a doc)

[Blaise Alleyne]

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