[kde-doc-english] User guide.

[Tom Albers]

Op maandag 25 oktober 2004 22:24, schreef Lauri Watts:
> On Monday 25 October 2004 19.52, Tom Albers wrote:
> > I have some dutch documentation which I can translate about creating éëæß
> > characters within KDE.
> >
> Yes, it is in fact useful, and something that is quite difficult for a lot
> of people.

As promised, see the document below. Hope you can find a place to include it & 
it is not to late....

Toma


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Source: http://www.kde.nl/doc/speciale-tekens/
Original Author: Frank Mulder
Modified and translated: Tom Albers
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Using international characters within KDE.

Basically, there are two ways of entering international characters:

Without deadkeys:  The best known way is by using the KCharSelect applet. But 
that applet takes room in the panel and does not contain all characters 
possible. Besides that you have to switch between keyboard and mouse, which 
is not very convenient when typing an email.

With deadkeys: Typing international characters is a lot easier now, but it has 
the disadvantage that you have to type quotes twice to get a quote. Very 
inconvient when you are programming for example.

Both methods are not ideal. An other alternative is to use a Compose key. With 
this key you can make international characters using a special key, the 
Compose key. By pressing this key, you make the next key 'dead'. This way you 
have the advantage of 'Without deadkeys' (being able to type a quote without 
having to do that twice). A disadvantage is that you have to type three keys 
to type an international character. If you want to type a é, you have to hit 
the Compose key, ' and an e.

Setting up a Compose key.
It is possible to set up a compose even without using KDE, because it is 
basically a X Window System setting, but KDE has provided a nice tool to set 
it up. 

To set up a Compose key go to the Control Center, section Regional & 
Accessibility, Keyboard Layout. Switch to the Xkb Options tab. Scroll through 
the list and look for the section 'Compose key'. Now you can choose which key 
will function as Compose Key. The Menu key or Right Win key are good options 
to choose if you have them, because they generally are not used anywhere 
else. Do not forget to switch of the deadkeys if you had them enabled on the 
Layout tab. 

Now you have set this up, you can start using it. Press the key you have 
assigned as Compose key, release it again, press on the key you want to have 
dead (quote for example), release it again, and press the character on which 
that deadkey has to go. So to get a ü, hit the Right Win key, hit the " and 
hit the u. 

Here are some nice examples of what is possible:
compose '"' 'u' to 'ü'
compose '"' 'y' to 'ÿ'
compose '(' 'c' to '©'
compose '(' 'r' to '®'
compose ',' 'C' to 'Ç'
compose ',' 'E' to 'Ê'
compose ',' 'G' to '«'
compose ',' 'a' to '±'
compose 's' 's' to 'ß'
compose 'e' '=' to '€'
compose '!' '!' to '¡'
compose '^' 'N' to 'Ñ'
compose '`' 'i' to 'ì'

A complete overview of all possible combinations is available in one of the 
keymaps which are installed on your local harddisk. If you use Debian, you 
can find them in /usr/share/keymaps/include and in SuSE in the 
folder /usr/share/kbs/include.

-- 
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