Character shortcuts

[Antonio Olivares]

On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 3:43 PM, Polytropon <freebsd at edvax.de> wrote:
> On Sat, 12 Mar 2011 14:07:59 -0600, Antonio Olivares <olivares14031 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Dear FreeBSD experts,
>>
>> There has been something that I find hard to do, I would like to find
>> a CTRL + KEY combination, or ALT + KEY combination to input special
>> characters like (ñ)  [ALT + 164 or ALT + 0241 in Mr. Gates OS].
>>
>> http://www.forlang.wsu.edu/help/keyboards.asp
>>
>> accents other symbols like copyright, euro, etc.  I would like to do
>> the same(have a special key combination) to get the characters in
>> FreeBSD too, but googling have not found something that works.  I even
>> tried to run a litte program in the shell to generate the characters
>> to use for cutting + pasting to no avial.
>
> Depending on your keyboard and language settings, many
> characters can be generated by Alt+Letter. There is also
> a COMPOSE key on some keyboards - and those that don't
> have it can be told to do so by xmodmap. Using the
> COMPOSE approach, you combine a letter with an accent
> or any other symbol, and if there is a matching result
> in your character set (or font), it will be displayed.
>
> Here are some examples:
>
>        Compose a a -> å (svedish a-circle)
>        Compose s s -> ß (german Eszett ligature)
>        Compose U " -> Ü (german U Umlaut, capital)
>        Compose L / -> Ł (polish L-stroke, capital)
>        Compose a , -> ą (polish a-comma)
>        Compose o / -> ø (danish o-stroke)
>        Compose k k -> ĸ (greek kappa)
>        Compose n ' -> ń (n with accent grave)
>
> And of course: Compose n ~ -> ñ.
>
> Depending on how characters like `, ´, ^ or ~ are handled
> (single character immediately output, or combination
> character that waits for the next letter to automatically
> construct a new one), Compose may be needed or not. On the
> default german keyboard setting, 'e gives é, ~n gives ñ
> and ^a gives â immediately without using Compose.
>
> My ~/.xmodmaprc contains (along with other lines):
>
>        add mod4 = Multi_key
>        keycode 117 = Multi_key
>
> You can find out the keycodes using the "xev" program.
>
> Your keyboard settings maybe sets other characters than
> can be created with Alt+letter or AltGr+letter (the
> german keyboard's right Alt key is labeled AltGr, or
> Alt Graph on my Sun keyboard), e. g. ¬¹²³¼½¬{[]}\
> @ł€¶ŧ←↓→øþþ¨ æßðđŋħjĸł˝^ «»¢“”nµ·, and with Shift
> ¬¡⅛£¤⅜⅝⅞™±°¿¿˛ ΩŁ€®Ŧ¥↑ıØÞ˚ ƧЪŊĦJ&Ł˝ˇ ¦<>©‘’Nº×÷.
>
> So instead of memorizing arbitrary numbers as in MICROS~1
> land, you can see a relation between the letter and the
> key you need to press in order to generate it. You can
> also rearrange them if you feel a need for that. :-)
>
>
>
> --
> Polytropon
> Magdeburg, Germany
> Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
> Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...

Thanks Frank & Polytropon for your input.  I have students that bug me
with how to put the characters on their responses to their instructors
on the web pages via email.  I tell them to open OpenOffice and insert
Special Character and then select the n with the tilde for the Spanish
work.  But they wanted an easier way sort of the way BILL GATES OS has
it.  And I told them I would ask so they could do it also in FreeBSD
and Linux land.  One student told me that it mattered which ISO Header
were used?  ISO 8*?  but I told him you gotta be kidding me.  There
has to be an easier way.  The keyboards are standard US all using
English keyboards.

I know how to do it in \LaTeX{} or \TeX{},
\~n, \'


but it does not matter for me, it is for them.  They have to write to
their spanish instructors in dual enrollment credit.  I tell them then
to open another page with the special letter and highlight them and
copy+paste them and they boo my answer :(


Regards,


Antonio