On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 4:24 PM, Grant Edwards <gra...@visi.com> wrote: > 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 seems like a sensible way of doing things. I can't believe I had never heard of it before! > 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?] I've used the US-International layout in KDE (or in Windows XP), where AltGr acts as a modifier, and most characters needed for European languages can be pressed with an easy AltGr-[key], but the compose key seems like it would be easier to remember what does what (assuming you don't have a keyboard with the international layout printed on the keys). For example, AltGr-q makes ä which doesn't make a whole lot of sense unless you've memorized it. KDE and WinXP allow you to easily toggle between layouts, so if I'm in need of some "foreign" characters (doing business in the UK and needing to type £ constantly, for example), I'll just toggle the US-Intl layout off and on. Here is the cheat sheet: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/22/KB_US-International.svg/800px-KB_US-International.svg.png Thanks, Paul
