Ever wanted to type some simple and very widely used characters other than the $ sign? A £ maybe? Or a ¢? Maybe you just wanted a © or ® symbol for your blog. This can be really painful under Linux as you will have to enter character map, or maybe copy the letter from somewhere else and paste it. What if the function were available on the keyboard itself? The answer to your prayers is here. The compose key.
A compose key is used to signal the software that the next keystrokes are to be interpret as a combination stroke and not a single keypress. You can assign the control key manually. There are multitude of methods available for this. We will focus on the simplest method under Gnome. Follow the sequence,
- Open System menu.
- Under Preferences, open keyboard.
- Go to layouts tab.
- Select the layout you currently use.
- Click on Layout Options.
- 5th in the list is compose key position.
- Select the key you want to be the compose key.
- Exit.
That’s it. Now you can compose all the unicode characters you want. Everything from math equations (what is ? ÷ ? btw?) right till currency equations (3$ = how many ¢?) Enjoy. The full list of unicode is available at xfree86. Next up, how to add your own characters to this list.
That is very useful advice, and something that I never would have guessed on my own. I’ve never heard the term compose for his process, thanks a bunch!