[gentoo-user] Re: Terminals that work with "compose" key?

[Grant Edwards]

On 2009-02-17, Paul Hartman <paul.hartman+gentoo@×××××.com> wrote:

> There is a "US-International" layout that makes the right-alt
> behave like Alt Gr, and allowing easier entry for non-English
> (mostly Spanish) characters. I don't know if US-International
> keyboards actually exists or if it's just a virtual layout.
> However, even then, it does not behave like the "Compose" key
> as described by the Wikipedia article, which makes it sound
> like a dead key.

A dead key and a compose key are related, but not quite the
same thing.  A dead key is one that when struck doesn't
generate a "letter" but instead modifies the "letter" that's
generated by the next keystroke. Unlike a modifier like
shift/alt/control, a dead key or a compose key is struck and
released and then the next key is struck.  Some non-English
keyboards have deadicated deadkeys for commonly used accents.
Dead keys are more-or-less the equivalent of a typewriter key
that imprints a glyph onto the paper but doesn't move the
platen (or the type-ball, if you want to think like a
selectric).

What a compose key does is temporarily make the _next_ key
struck act like a dead key.

To enter ô, you strike compose, ^, o.  Hitting compose makes
the ^ key temporarily into a dead key.

> It's just a modifier, like Shift. It doesn't indicate any
> combining of following keystrokes. Maybe it does act like that
> for other layouts. It's all news to me, as I've never used any
> non-US keyboard. :)

Me neither.  I've set up right-ALT as my compose key.  [How do
you enter accented or non-latin characters without a compose
key?]

The problem is that it stopped working recently in aterm, and I
can't figure out why.  In aterm, if I hit compose ^ o, I just
get "^o".  In urxvt, compose sequences are ignored completely.

Furthermore, both aterm and urxvt correctly _display_ non-ascii
characters that were entered in other applications using
compose sequences.  You can even paste them into aterm and
urxvt. You just can't enter them from the keyboard.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow! over in west
                                  at               Philadelphia a puppy is
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