Adding Character Accents in XFree86?

debrain asks: "How does one access accent characters (such as tilde, grav, acute, etc.) over normal characters in XFree86? I am quite good with Linux, X, and the like, but I have never found a *good*, *simple* way to do this. Some programs have post-character keystrokes, such as 'a' followed by 'alt-g' or some such, but is there a consistent way to do this, without hacks such as 'dead keys' in XFree86?" A system-wide facility for entering such chars would be a nice thing, if it does exist, then please share the info. Most apps have their own handling for these special characters. What applications do have keystrokes that allow you to easily add character accents, and if you were to design a system-wide handler for such, how would you do it?

Comments

The 'proper' way

[Yarn]

As I understand it, compose

Compose should generally be bound to the alt-gr key,
but the keyboard in XF4+ is incredibly broken for non-US layouts.

By 'broken' I mean 'different from 3.x' :p

Another problem is programs grabbing the alt key for their own uses, so even when you can type an extended character, it may be grabbed as a command

Re:The 'proper' way

[PeterClark]

I can't guarantee this for every distro, but I've always been able to use the "right flying window" key (found on just about every American 104-key keyboard these days) as the compose key, right out of the box, so to speak.

It's just a matter of looking up the sequence and typing it in. For instance,


[right windows key] + ['] + [e] = é

[right windows key] + [,] + [c] = ç


Note that it is not necessary to hold down the buttons; one at a time will do.

:Peter

I would

[unhooked]

read the manpage for xmodmap.

Ideally ;-)

[Sam Lowry]

Ideally, you need only two commands:

export LANG=en_UK.UTF-8
xsetkb us_intl

and then, you will be able to input
the accented chars by typing `a or a`
or e' or `e -- it all dependa on your
particular system.

Composing

[rikkus-x]

To enter characters that aren't on your keys, you probably want to use the 'compose' method. This is part of X, so it works for all apps. Once you start using it, you can forget about app-specific hacks.

First you need to decide which key(s) will be used for composing. I have <> keys, so I use them, but you may want to use something like AltGr if you have a typical PC keyboard.

To find the code generated by a key, run xev and then press the key. On my keyboard, pressing the right 'alt' key generates code 113.

Now you need to tell X to use this key as a compose key, using something like this:

xmodmap -e 'keycode 113 = Multi_key'

After doing this, pressing the compose key and then a combination of other keys will generate the characters you're after. For example: Compose + e + " generates ë (lowercase e with an umlaut).

Now you may add the above xmodmap invocation to your ~/.xinitrc or ~/.xsession or both, to have the setting ready when you next log in.

I have tried to tabulate all the available compositions for iso-8859-1 (latin-1) on my website, here.

Rik

Mode_shift, dead keys, and xkeycaps

[red_dragon]

I once went through the hassle of setting up my US keyboard in XFree 3.x to emulate Windows' US-International layout (I had become very accustomed to it). One thing I quickly learned is that using Compose is uncomfortably clumsy, and usually didn't work the way I expected it to. That's when I found about XKeycaps, a little X program written using libXaw that allows the user to produce an xmodmap file visually. I eventually did something like this:

• Assigned Mode_shift to RightAlt (AltGr, if your keyboard has that);
• Changed the apostrophe to dead_acute, double quote to dead_diaeresis, backtick to dead_grave, asciitilde to dead_tilde, and asciicircum to dead_circumflex;
• Assigned alternate graphs to various keys, so that they'd work the same way they'd do under Windows when Mode_shift is pressed.

IIRC, XF4 comes with a "us_intl" layout that is similar ("XkbLayout('us_intl')" in XFree86config, I think), but too many things were different from what I expected that I still kept using my old xmodmap file. It does provide for a good starting point, however; you won't have to do as much with xmodmap as a result.

Re:Dead keys?

[sharkey]

Dont you americans have dead-keys on your keyboards?

I know I do. Th third ky from th lft in qwrty is dad on my kyboard, that's why it's so hard to rad what I hav writtn.