Are there any? Looks like I can’t use the familiar combination Alt-### to invoke characters that are not on the keyboard, like the en and em dashes. Is there any way to produce those characters without resorting to the KCharSelect application and browsing, cutting and pasting?
I have no idea what is “familiar” to you, but when I need characters that are not on the keyboard, I use the Compose Key (which is Shift-RightControl in my case, but AFAIK you kan configure that) and then two keys that combine to the character. Those combinations are rather “logic”. E.g.:
’ e for é
s s for ß
, s for ş
= e for € and e = for € and = E for € and = c for €
^ 7 for ⁷
1 2 for ½
I am able to use the Alt Gr key sometimes with the shift key as well to obtain other characters like these ² ³ € °æßðđŋħłħħߢ“”µ@ł¶ŧ←↓→øþƧЪŊĦŁ so have a play and see what happens.
By familiar I mean Windows environment. I’m used to use Alt-### combinations quickly: Alt-0151 for —, Alt-0150 for –, Alt-0176 for °, and so forth. You probably guessed: I’m typing this on my Windows machine, using an English (US) keyboard, which doesn’t have a number of characters that I use. I was typing on a thread in these forums yesternight and when I tried to produce the en dash, which I use extensively in my typing/writing, using the Alt- combo Firefox started doing all kinds of funny things.
Am 20.02.2016 um 20:06 schrieb Alveric:
> By familiar I mean Windows environment. I’m used to use Alt-###
> combinations quickly: Alt-0151 for —, Alt-0150 for –, Alt-0176 for
> °, and so forth. You probably guessed: I’m typing this on my Windows
> machine, using an English (US) keyboard, which doesn’t have a number of
> characters that I use. I was typing on a thread in these forums
> yesternight and when I tried to produce the en dash, which I use
> extensively in my typing/writing, using the Alt- combo Firefox started
> doing all kinds of funny things.
>
>
does that help http://fsymbols.com/keyboard/linux/unicode/
I tried that it works on my laptop
it is not exactly the same as the unicode codes differ from the codes
windows uses
–
PC: oS 42.1 x86_64 | i7-2600@3.40GHz | 16GB | KDE 5.16 | GTX 760
Yoga 2 Pro: oS 42.1 | x86_64 | i7-4500U@1.80GHz | 8GB | KDE 5.16 | Haswell
HTPC: oS 42.1 x86_64 | Celeron@1.8GHz | 2GB | Gnome 3.16 | HD 2500
Am 20.02.2016 um 21:56 schrieb hcvv:
>
> martin_helm;2755280 Wrote:
>>
>> it is not exactly the same as the unicode codes differ from the codes
>> windows uses
>>
> As Linux standardises on Unicode, I assume it is not of much usage to
> enter Windows encodings.
>
>
I mentioned it because the OP has to learn new codes (also modern
windows standardizes on unicode, the old codes are a legacy from old
days, in the old days also linux did not use unicode, but code pages
like iso-8859-1 and so on)
–
PC: oS 42.1 x86_64 | i7-2600@3.40GHz | 16GB | KDE 5.16 | GTX 760
Yoga 2 Pro: oS 42.1 | x86_64 | i7-4500U@1.80GHz | 8GB | KDE 5.16 | Haswell
HTPC: oS 42.1 x86_64 | Celeron@1.8GHz | 2GB | Gnome 3.16 | HD 2500
Should also note that as expected, since you are invoking your keystroke combinations in a Desktop environment that the installed Desktop is a major factor for various keystroke combos.
And then, various keystroke combos will be supported specific to the running application.
But no, in general I have found that even the supposed unicode keystroke combos aren’t typically the same in Linux and Windows.
I don’t expect Linux to be Windows or like Windows (Heaven forbid). As long as I can produce the characters I need without mousing over, selecting, clicking, cutting and pasting and back to the application I was typing on ad nauseam I don’t care about the codes I need to use. That’s all I want to do. I’m not inimical to learning new things or different ways of doing the same thing. If I am to replace Windows with Linux I must be not only comfortable using the new OS but proficient and efficient enough in it so that I can focus on my work and not on the OS.
I’ve learned some of the Alt-* shortcuts by heart now (that’s how much I use them), but yes, originally I had to look them up on an ASCII table (I used to have a printed one by my desk many years ago) or on the Charmap then wrote down the Alt-* combo and have it on a sticky note above my monitor.
I compared the codes from the Charmap and KCharSelect and the U-codes are the same, but DOS/Windows seems to be the only one using Alt-* combinations: they don’t exist in Mac OS and neither in Linux by the looks of it. Maybe that should be a feature request for future versions of SUSE.
I do not understand you complete. In post #2 and #3 above we have shown you how to enter those characters (with diacriticals and more). Did you succeed in finding your Compose key and use it to satisfaction or not? When not, we are willing to help you, but you must explain us where you got stuck then.
Nope, I wasn’t successful in finding the Compose key. I opened Kate to try the combos suggested in posts #2 and #3 and wasn’t successful at all. When I tried Shift-RightCtrl-s I got the Save Document dialogue box.
Following the advice on the linked page
Hold down *[Left Ctrl] + [Shift] + keys (at the same time).
Underlined u
should appear. >
did not produce the underlined u. Trying to follow the advice therein in the Official Note didn’t work either. Leaving the keys held as suggested made Kate pop up a warning about ‘ambiguous shortcut detected’. :(*
Am 21.02.2016 um 22:06 schrieb Alveric:
> Following the advice on the linked page
>>
>> Hold down -[Left Ctrl] + [Shift] + - keys (at the same time).
>>> >
> - Underlined u should appear.
> > > >
>>
> did not produce the underlined u. Trying to follow the advice therein in
> the Official Note didn’t work either. Leaving the keys held as suggested
> made Kate pop up a warning about ‘ambiguous shortcut detected’.
>
tested that now in kate, you are right it does not work there, but works
as advertized in the geany editor and also thunderbird, I am myself
somewhat surprised
–
PC: oS 42.1 x86_64 | i7-2600@3.40GHz | 16GB | KDE 5.16 | GTX 760
Yoga 2 Pro: oS 42.1 | x86_64 | i7-4500U@1.80GHz | 8GB | KDE 5.16 | Haswell
HTPC: oS 42.1 x86_64 | Celeron@1.8GHz | 2GB | Gnome 3.16 | HD 2500
Yeah, I think the keyboard shortcuts should be system wide, or maybe like in the Mac, in which holding the different modifier keys, even in different combinations gives you a different character. Kate has a Configure Shortcuts item under the Settings menu, but it seems that it works only for Kate: if one has to set up keyboard shortcuts in every single program, well, that’s not at all helpful and a major hassle (unless you could create a config file that could be fed to each program, but even then).
♪° Hmm, yes, the Ctrl-Shift-U trick does work here in Firefox. –woot—. Wonder in which other applications it does. Already tried the Konsole and it doesn’t work there. Oh well, we’re halfway there. Thank you all for your help so far. :good:
one thing I forgot since I always have it installed is that you need the
package ibus-qt (you may need to logout and login if you install it).
For me it works in libre office and calligra where I need it. Tried also
yakuake (terminal) where it works while in konsole not - strange since
both are kde programs.
–
PC: oS 42.1 x86_64 | i7-2600@3.40GHz | 16GB | KDE 5.16 | GTX 760
Yoga 2 Pro: oS 42.1 | x86_64 | i7-4500U@1.80GHz | 8GB | KDE 5.16 | Haswell
HTPC: oS 42.1 x86_64 | Celeron@1.8GHz | 2GB | Gnome 3.16 | HD 2500
Can I assume you use KDE as your desktop environment? I believe GNOME has support for entering code points directly via Ctrl+Shift+U or some such, but that is not the case with KDE. I ignore if this is a planned feature.
There are two other ways of entering “special” characters in KDE, however: the compose key, and AltGr (if your keyboard has one, or you can reassign it—come back to ask how if needed).
As everything else, those two can be reassigned and reconfigured, by the user, packagers, developers, … nearly everyone along the chain, in a myriad ways so the specifics depend on your distribution + choice of installation.
With that said, making the not unreasonable assumption that you are using KDE and OpenSUSE, try:
AltGr + another key to produce some commonly used characters (for some definition of “commonly used”). Best thing to do is open a text editor and try different AltGr combinations. Try with and without Shift. Some examples are: AltGr+a: æ, AltGr+Shift+a: Æ, AltGr+v and AltGr+b for “fancy quotes” ← like these. AltGr+y will give you a left-pointing arrow, btw.
Also note that some combinations are dead keys. For example, to get an ‘e’ with acute accent (é) you go AltGr+; followed by ‘e’. To get an ‘r’ with haček (aka as caron, the ˇ mark), use AltGr+Shift+’ (quote mark) followed by ‘r’, thusly: ř (or Shift+r for uppercase: Ř).
In general, many of the combinations are pretty intuitive and easy to remember. They’re also much faster to type than a Unicode code point once used to it. With that said, there are plenty of
cheatsheets on the web that you can avail yourself of. Here is one example—disregard the Ubuntu bit, it works the same for me here on Tumbleweed: http://www.cheatography.com/davechild/cheat-sheets/ubuntu-compose-key-combinations/
I hope this helps a bit. If you have any more questions do not hesitate to ask.
> to give you examples
>
> [shift][ctrl]u 152 -> Œ
> [shift] [ctrl]u 16e -> Ů
>
> you can create any unicode character that way
>
> and so on, the table to look up what is what, for example here
> http://unicodelookup.com/ or at many other places
>
>
That combination is a gnome thing.
It should work in gnome apps but not kde apps.
I think licehunter posted an extensive explanation.
Of course it is easier to use the character combintations then the Unicode points.
I tried to recreate the Kate problem, but it seems that I do not have Kate installed (on my openSUSE 131.1). Kwrite is installed and works as expected. As does Konsole (most editing is done by me using vi, not something I will advice to the uninitiated). And in Kosole not only while using vi, but also in bash itself
henk@boven:~/test/chars> touch Œé⁶
henk@boven:~/test/chars> ls -l
totaal 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 henk wij 0 22 feb 10:03 Œé⁶
henk@boven:~/test/chars>
So, you’re using KDE. What you need to do is this:
Systemsettings ( also known as Configure Desktop ) -> Input Devices -> Advanced -> check the Keyboard Options item -> “open” Compose Key Position -> check the Right Alt item -> Apply. Next, as a test, hit Right-Alt, “=”, “C” and see the “€” sign appear. To illustrate the power of this feature: A turkish student reported this was the first OS that allowed her to write her first name the way it should be writen. Before linux she only could do this on a turkish windows version.