[SOLVED]Shortcut keys for special characters

[Mazal]

Good day everyone ,

I'm gonna ask what probably is a stupid question , but I couldn't find proper help with searching. I'm looking for the shortcut keys list for special characters.(like the alt-136) combination you have in Windows. In my language we have a lot of special characters for e,i and u and I can't find the shortcut keys for it.

In libre I did forn it under the "insert" menu , but that is just way to long a path to have to go there everytime you need to insert a character. And secondly how do you insert in other apps like email then and in firefox where you don't even have a "insert" menu ?

Can someone point me in the right direction please.

Thank you

[Mazal]

Re: Shortcut keys for special characters

Update: I have found a way that sort-off works. I added a "character selector" widget.

But still , I have to go and open it , select the character , copy it to clipboard , paste it into document.

Surely there must be shortcuts for these ?

[kubicle]

Re: Shortcut keys for special characters

There are many ways you can type special characters, but I'd estimate the most common method these days is using a "compose" key.

You can set which key will act as "compose" in SystemSettings>InputDevices>Keyboard>Advanced-tab>Compose.

A subset of available combinations for compose can be found here (you can probably google for more):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compose_key

EDIT: the wiki page links to a more complete listing:
http://www.hermit.org/Linux/ComposeKeys.html

[Mazal]

Re: Shortcut keys for special characters

Thank you very much for the help

[dibl]

Re: [SOLVED]Shortcut keys for special characters

You can also set an alternate keyboard layout for your language, and switch between that layout and your default (U.S. English?) layout.

Systemsettings > Input Devices > Layouts > Add Layout

A flag icon will be on your panel, and clicking the flag icon will switch between the layouts.

[bsniadajewski]

Re: [SOLVED]Shortcut keys for special characters

Or, along similar lines of dibl, you can set US International (without Dead Keys?), where you can compose many letter-accent combinations for many Latin-based alphabets (a lot more than same layout under Windows, IDK if it's changed in W7 though.).

[kln]

Re: [SOLVED]Shortcut keys for special characters

I've been having that issue for a long time : no ê ë î ï ...
I finally solved it after seeing a post on French Ubuntu forum : for the French keyboard layout, change the variant to 'French (alternative, latin-9 only)', then reboot.
No interference with other layouts or IM (scim, ibus).

I've tried with the compose key as it is often suggested, but didn't managed to produce any one of these (you do get 'â' and a lot of other things like œ, æ, but no way to get ê ë î ï). Anyway, the compose key doesn't reproduce the exact behaviour of the French azerty keyboard (dead keys for ¨ and ^).

Hope it works for other languages and situations.
Link to ubuntu-fr : http://forum.ubuntu-fr.org/viewtopic.php?id=283630&p=1