Special character composition

[Tako Schotanus]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: kde-bounces-+quintesse=palacio-cristal.com at mail.kde.org 
> [mailto:kde-bounces-+quintesse=palacio-cristal.com at mail.kde.or
> g] On Behalf Of David Corbin
> Sent: vrijdag 26 september 2003 13:42
> To: kde at mail.kde.org; Brian T. Schellenberger; James Richard Tyrer
> Subject: Re: [kde] Special character composition
> 
> 
> On Thursday 25 September 2003 22:45, Brian T. Schellenberger wrote:
> > | > You don't touch type, do you? :-)
> > | >
> > | > But it would work for people that don't.
> > |
> > | But I do touch type.  Not "exactly like you're supposed 
> to", but I'm
> > | probably good for 50 WPM (corrected).   Why did you 
> suppose that my
> > | suggestion meant I don't touch type?
> >
> > Because since ` and e are both on the same hand, it's hard to type.
> >
> > And ` and a are impossible to touch-type together since 
> they are on the
> > same *finger*.
> >
> > By touch-type of course he would have meant "correctly" 
> touch typing; if
> > you use more than two fingers but not in the official (or 
> at least an
> > consistent) way, then held-down keys would work.  For those 
> who do, it's
> > essential in theory that shift-type keys have one on each side.
> >
> > That said, there is only one CTRL key on keyboards and 
> somehow we manage
> > even atrocities like ^a.  But if there were very many of 
> those, it would
> > sure slow down the touch-typists.  To type things like that 
> I have to
> > essentially move my left hand "off the keyboard" just as I 
> must do with my
> > right hand when using the mouse, and it slows down the 
> typing a *lot*.
> 
> I barely use accented characters (only because I'm learning 
> Portugese) and I'm 
> so slow thinking in Portugese, touch-typing is hardly a concern.   My 
> "no-standard" touch-typing has mostly to do with 
> shift/alt/ctrl type stuff.  
> Thiinking about it, I never use the right hand for modifier 
> key.  If I need 
> to type "Shift-A", I hit the A with my "S-finger" (left ring).
> 
> Having said all that (like anyone cared), I retract my 
> suggestion as poorly 
> thought idea.  But the original (make the dead-keys be alt or 
> ctrl oriented) 
> suggestion was a good one, I think.  Particularly for 
> programmers and others 
> that seldom but do occaisionally need accented characters.

I looked a bit at the documentation of xkb and related stuff and it
seems that in theory it should be possible to make dead keys work only
when pressed in combination with CTRL or ALT but the documentation is
just too vague or sparse for me to be sure and currently I have too many
other projects going on to go and spend a lot of time digging deeper ;-)
But maybe if somebody with more knowledge of these things could provide
some more info/pointers?

-Tako

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