1 |
Collins Richey wrote: |
2 |
> On Mon, 06 Dec 2004 13:52:17 +0100, Holly Bostick <motub@××××××.nl> wrote: |
3 |
> |
4 |
> [ snips ] |
5 |
> |
6 |
> |
7 |
>>The Gentoo Weekly newsletter (06-12-04) has the answer! |
8 |
>> |
9 |
>>================== |
10 |
>>8. Tips and Tricks |
11 |
>>================== |
12 |
>> |
13 |
>>Revival of the Compose Key a.k.a. Multi_Key |
14 |
>>------------------------------------------- |
15 |
>> |
16 |
>>A complete list of available Compose Key characters with |
17 |
>>their description can be found in the file |
18 |
>>/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/locale/<your_character_enocding>/Compose. |
19 |
>> |
20 |
> |
21 |
> |
22 |
> Thanks for the tip. For some reason, restarting the X server didn't do |
23 |
> the trick, but a reboot did (shades of Windows <g>). |
24 |
> |
25 |
> Now here's a really dumb question. How does one determine what |
26 |
> <your_character_encoding> one is using in order to determine which |
27 |
> Compose combinations are valid? |
28 |
> |
29 |
> |
30 |
|
31 |
Well, if you're using a language other than English, you probably |
32 |
already know your character encoding. People who need their |
33 |
by-default-English-language distro to display Chinese, Japanese, |
34 |
Icelandic or Hebrew have dealt with this issue often enough to have |
35 |
memorized this kind of data, I would think. Heck, I've memorized it, and |
36 |
Dutch is my second language (meaning I *could* just use the English |
37 |
defaults and be better off since I understand English way better than I |
38 |
do Dutch). |
39 |
|
40 |
If you're using English, the default is iso-8859-1 (us english), which |
41 |
does not contain many characters used in other Latin-based languages |
42 |
that have things like accents. |
43 |
|
44 |
iso-8859-15 is west european languages, which has all the English |
45 |
language characters, plus stuff like the circumflex and other accents, |
46 |
and umlauts and of course, the Euro symbol, since one needs those |
47 |
characters to type effectively in a West European language, whereas you |
48 |
don't if you're typing in US English. |
49 |
|
50 |
But I usually keep track of which number goes with which language by |
51 |
checking the kernel; File Systems=>Native Language support is a nice |
52 |
list of what languages/character sets all the codepage numbers and |
53 |
encoding designations represent. |
54 |
|
55 |
And naturally, this is not so much an issue if you have a keyboard that |
56 |
matches your language-- I would imagine that a Dutch keyboard would |
57 |
contain all the accents I might need, and probably the Euro symbol as |
58 |
well, and I could just type normally, using the Shift key or the Alt key |
59 |
to specify the alternate character displayed on the keyboard, and since |
60 |
the keymap knows what's there, it would just be typed, like the $ or the |
61 |
~ is on my present keyboard. |
62 |
|
63 |
My issue is that I'm using a US keyboard, so I really don't have a |
64 |
keymap for many of these characters-- there is no umlaut in the us |
65 |
keyboard map. When I was using Windows, I could look at the Character |
66 |
Map applet and find a keycombo (that's the reference to <ALT>+0128) that |
67 |
would type the character that the combo was associated with. So I only |
68 |
had to use the charmap applet once, to find out the combo; after that, I |
69 |
could just use the combo to type the character in most apps. Under |
70 |
Linux, the charmap applets tell me how to write the character in HTML, |
71 |
but not in gedit; I have to open the charmap every time, change the font |
72 |
to the font I'm using in the application, find the character, and copy |
73 |
and paste it into my document. This tip changes all that. |
74 |
|
75 |
But honestly, if one doesn't deal much with locales, and character |
76 |
encoding is a new term, because one rarely or never needs to type |
77 |
characters in a language not supported by one's keyboard, then this is |
78 |
not really that valuable a tip. |
79 |
|
80 |
But if you do, I at least found it pretty hot. |
81 |
|
82 |
I'm going to reboot now, and then send a mail to this list with nothing |
83 |
but Euro symbols... ;-) |
84 |
|
85 |
Holly |
86 |
|
87 |
Oh, all right, not really. I'm sure a text file in Kedit will be good |
88 |
enough to satisfy me :-) . |
89 |
|
90 |
-- |
91 |
gentoo-user@g.o mailing list |