[gentoo-user] For everyone missing <ALT>+0128 to type the Euro symbol...

[gentoo-user] For everyone missing <ALT>+0128 to type the Euro symbol...

[Holly Bostick]

The Gentoo Weekly newsletter (06-12-04) has the answer!

==================
8. Tips and Tricks
==================

Revival of the Compose Key a.k.a. Multi_Key
-------------------------------------------

Many users are on a keyboard layout which does not allow to type other
characters than those printed on the keys. There are some workarounds with
so-called "deadkeys" so that you can type characters with accents, but
that does not enable you to type all characters in your locale.

On many Unix-machines you can find a "Compose Key" on the attached
keyboard. With that special key you can "compose" the desired character.
For instance, typing the sequence <compose> <"> <a> will result in the
Umlaut ä. Or take <compose> </> <o> for a danish ø. With X it is no
problem to declare any key as the Compose Key, or "Multi_Key" as it is
called in the internal routines. Just remember that a keyboard sends only
keycodes, and that it is unimportant which keycode represents a given
character or special key.

To enable the Compose Key you have to alter your /etc/X11/xorg.conf. There
are other ways, like using xmodmap, but the global configuration with the
xorg.conf ensures that the Compose Key will be available to all users. I
recommend the right "Windows Key" (just one of the two on your keyboard
enabled should be enough):

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Code Listing 8.1:                                                       |
|Enable the Compose Key in the                                            |
xorg.conf------------------------------------------------------------------
-------
|                                                                         |
|# Your section in xorg.conf about the keyboard looks similar to this:    |
|Section "InputDevice"                                                    |
|        Identifier      "Keyboard0"                                      |
|        Driver          "kbd"                                            |
|        Option          "XkbModel"      "pc104"                          |
|        Option          "XkbLayout"     "us"                             |
|        Option          "XkbOptions"    "compose:rwin"                   |
|EndSection                                                               |
|                                                                         |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

After you restart X, you should be able to type the characters in the
example above. A complete list of available Compose Key characters with
their description can be found in the file
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/locale/<your_character_enocding>/Compose.

------------------------------------------------------

Extremely cool, as I just checked the file for iso8859-15, and yes, as 
soon as I set a Compose Key, I will finally be able to type the Euro 
symbol on my US keyboard using

<Multi_key> <e> <equal>   : "\244" EuroSign

because there is already a setting for the symbol, I just didn't know 
what it was.

Woo hoo! gucharmap can finally get off my menu, and I can type like a 
normal person.

A HUGE shout-out to the Newsletter editors and contributors for this 
fabulous tip which should help a lot more people than just me.

Just a heads-up for those of you who don't get the NL; especially since 
I know there's at least one other person on this list who doesn't know 
how to type useful Dutch characters under Linux-- but I couldn't find 
who it was via a search of my mail, so thought I'd tell everybody ;-) .

Holly


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Re: [gentoo-user] For everyone missing <ALT>+0128 to type the Euro symbol...

[Collins Richey]

On Mon, 06 Dec 2004 13:52:17 +0100, Holly Bostick <motub@planet.nl> wrote:

[ snips ]

> The Gentoo Weekly newsletter (06-12-04) has the answer!
> 
> ==================
> 8. Tips and Tricks
> ==================
> 
> Revival of the Compose Key a.k.a. Multi_Key
> -------------------------------------------
> 
> A complete list of available Compose Key characters with
> their description can be found in the file
> /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/locale/<your_character_enocding>/Compose.
> 

Thanks for the tip. For some reason, restarting the X server didn't do
the trick, but a reboot did (shades of Windows <g>).

Now here's a really dumb question. How does one determine what
<your_character_encoding> one is using in order to determine which
Compose combinations are valid?


-- 
 Collins

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Re: [gentoo-user] For everyone missing <ALT>+0128 to type the Euro symbol...

[Holly Bostick]

Collins Richey wrote:
> On Mon, 06 Dec 2004 13:52:17 +0100, Holly Bostick <motub@planet.nl> wrote:
> 
> [ snips ]
> 
> 
>>The Gentoo Weekly newsletter (06-12-04) has the answer!
>>
>>==================
>>8. Tips and Tricks
>>==================
>>
>>Revival of the Compose Key a.k.a. Multi_Key
>>-------------------------------------------
>>
>>A complete list of available Compose Key characters with
>>their description can be found in the file
>>/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/locale/<your_character_enocding>/Compose.
>>
> 
> 
> Thanks for the tip. For some reason, restarting the X server didn't do
> the trick, but a reboot did (shades of Windows <g>).
> 
> Now here's a really dumb question. How does one determine what
> <your_character_encoding> one is using in order to determine which
> Compose combinations are valid?
> 
> 

Well, if you're using a language other than English, you probably 
already know your character encoding. People who need their 
by-default-English-language distro to display Chinese, Japanese, 
Icelandic or Hebrew have dealt with this issue often enough to have 
memorized this kind of data, I would think. Heck, I've memorized it, and 
Dutch is my second language (meaning I *could* just use the English 
defaults and be better off since I understand English way better than I 
do Dutch).

If you're using English, the default is iso-8859-1 (us english), which 
does not contain many characters used in other Latin-based languages 
that have things like accents.

iso-8859-15 is west european languages, which has all the English 
language characters, plus stuff like the circumflex and other accents, 
and umlauts and of course, the Euro symbol, since one needs those 
characters to type effectively in a West European language, whereas you 
don't if you're typing in US English.

But I usually keep track of which number goes with which language by 
checking the kernel; File Systems=>Native Language support is a nice 
list of what languages/character sets all the codepage numbers and 
encoding designations represent.

And naturally, this is not so much an issue if you have a keyboard that 
matches your language-- I would imagine that a Dutch keyboard would 
contain all the accents I might need, and probably the Euro symbol as 
well, and I could just type normally, using the Shift key or the Alt key 
to specify the alternate character displayed on the keyboard, and since 
the keymap knows what's there, it would just be typed, like the $ or the 
~ is on my present keyboard.

My issue is that I'm using a US keyboard, so I really don't have a 
keymap for many of these characters-- there is no umlaut in the us 
keyboard map. When I was using Windows, I could look at the Character 
Map applet and find a keycombo (that's the reference to <ALT>+0128) that 
would type the character that the combo was associated with. So I only 
had to use the charmap applet once, to find out the combo; after that, I 
could just use the combo to type the character in most apps. Under 
Linux, the charmap applets tell me how to write the character in HTML, 
but not in gedit; I have to open the charmap every time, change the font 
to the font I'm using in the application, find the character, and copy 
and paste it into my document. This tip changes all that.

But honestly, if one doesn't deal much with locales, and character 
encoding is a new term, because one rarely or never needs to type 
characters in a language not supported by one's keyboard, then this is 
not really that valuable a tip.

But if you do, I at least found it pretty hot.

I'm going to reboot now, and then send a mail to this list with nothing 
but Euro symbols... ;-)

Holly

Oh, all right, not really. I'm sure a text file in Kedit will be good 
enough to satisfy me :-) .

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Re: [gentoo-user] For everyone missing <ALT>+0128 to type the Euro symbol...

[Mikko 'Mr. Ethics' Ruuska]

On Mon, Dec 06, 2004 at 11:25:23PM +0100, Holly Bostick wrote:
> If you're using English, the default is iso-8859-1 (us english), which 
> does not contain many characters used in other Latin-based languages 
> that have things like accents.
> 
> iso-8859-15 is west european languages, which has all the English 
> language characters, plus stuff like the circumflex and other accents, 
> and umlauts and of course, the Euro symbol, since one needs those 
> characters to type effectively in a West European language, whereas you 
> don't if you're typing in US English.
> 

Well, actually iso-8859-1 is also known as Latin-1, and not without a
reason. It _has_ all the usual latin-based thingies and the only
difference between iso-8859-1 and iso-8859-15 is the euro symbol
(which no one should use as we have the letter e that does the thing
quite nicely.  Although euro does replace the oh-so-often-used
"international currency symbol" or some such).

Mikko

-- 
mikko.ruuska@solidtech.com --//-- research & development
http://www.solidtech.com

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Re: [gentoo-user] For everyone missing <ALT>+0128 to type the Euro symbol...

[Janne Johansson]

On Tue, 2004-12-07 at 14:31 +0200, Mikko 'Mr. Ethics' Ruuska wrote:
> Well, actually iso-8859-1 is also known as Latin-1, and not without a
> reason. It _has_ all the usual latin-based thingies and the only
> difference between iso-8859-1 and iso-8859-15 is the euro symbol

Wrong. Euro symbol is by no means the only difference between those two
character sets.

-- 
Janne


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Re: [gentoo-user] For everyone missing <ALT>+0128 to type the Euro symbol...

[Janne Johansson]

On Tue, 2004-12-07 at 14:35 +0200, Janne Johansson wrote:
> On Tue, 2004-12-07 at 14:31 +0200, Mikko 'Mr. Ethics' Ruuska wrote:
> > Well, actually iso-8859-1 is also known as Latin-1, and not without a
> > reason. It _has_ all the usual latin-based thingies and the only
> > difference between iso-8859-1 and iso-8859-15 is the euro symbol
> 
> Wrong. Euro symbol is by no means the only difference between those two
> character sets.

and the one thing I forgot:
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/latin9.html

-- 
Janne


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Re: [gentoo-user] For everyone missing <ALT>+0128 to type the Euro symbol...

[Bill Roberts]

On 14:31 Tue 07 Dec     , Mikko 'Mr. Ethics' Ruuska wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 06, 2004 at 11:25:23PM +0100, Holly Bostick wrote:
> > If you're using English, the default is iso-8859-1 (us english), which 
> > does not contain many characters used in other Latin-based languages 
> > that have things like accents.

Holly -

A nice tip! 

I have a question that is a little OT. I've been using "bitstream
vera sans mono" for my mlterm because it soo. . . much easier on my
old eyes than some of the other fonts, but it has poor coverage of
non-Latin fonts, so I am looking at trying one of the "terminus"
fonts, which look pretty good, or the "unifont", for more complete
coverage.

Problem is, I can't get X to recognize that I emerged those fonts.
Neither of them appear in "xlsfonts" or "xfontsel".  I've tried
various combinations of mkfontdir, mkfontscale, xset, all to no avail.

Any suggestions?

Bill

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