Character shortcuts

[Frank Shute]

On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 03:57:31PM -0600, Antonio Olivares wrote:
>
> 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.
> >
[snip]
> 
> 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.

It depends on how the webpage handles things. Just cutting and pasting
will end up with indeterminate results because the way a webpage
handles a Euro is different to how email handles a Euro (only
iso8859-15 has a Euro character IIRC) which is different to how an xterm
handles it... etc.

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

I don't suppose for a minute that all your students use LaTeX or you
could just ask them to send an attached pdf.

> 
> 
> 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 :(

Antonio, if they're writing to their Spanish instructors using a
web to email gateway then their characters are likely to get mangled.

If the gateway accepts attachments, then a pdf is the best bet: you
know special characters wont get mangled.

Tell your idle scum^H^H...students to learn LaTeX and a decent text
editor ;)

> 
> Regards,
> 
> 
> Antonio

Regards,

-- 

 Frank

 Contact info: http://www.shute.org.uk/misc/contact.html


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