From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Bob Proulx Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: accented letters ( typing in ) Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2014 16:07:36 -0700 Message-ID: <20140117230736.GA30062@hysteria.proulx.com> References: <1389982848501-310678.post@n5.nabble.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1390000079 25568 80.91.229.3 (17 Jan 2014 23:07:59 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2014 23:07:59 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org To: Michel Chassey Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sat Jan 18 00:08:05 2014 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1W4IWB-0006pq-GI for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Sat, 18 Jan 2014 00:08:03 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:40554 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1W4IWA-00089m-Uz for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Fri, 17 Jan 2014 18:08:02 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:47385) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1W4IVs-00089S-Fr for Help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Fri, 17 Jan 2014 18:07:50 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1W4IVm-0001KJ-EJ for Help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Fri, 17 Jan 2014 18:07:44 -0500 Original-Received: from joseki.proulx.com ([216.17.153.58]:56419) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1W4IVm-0001KC-2x for Help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Fri, 17 Jan 2014 18:07:38 -0500 Original-Received: from hysteria.proulx.com (hysteria.proulx.com [192.168.230.119]) by joseki.proulx.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id E497F21228; Fri, 17 Jan 2014 16:07:36 -0700 (MST) Original-Received: by hysteria.proulx.com (Postfix, from userid 1000) id B5D342DCD2; Fri, 17 Jan 2014 16:07:36 -0700 (MST) Mail-Followup-To: Michel Chassey , Help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <1389982848501-310678.post@n5.nabble.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 3.x X-Received-From: 216.17.153.58 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:95467 Archived-At: Michel Chassey wrote: > Emacs displays all accented letters flawlessly from my files but I cann= ot > type in these accented letters.=20 > =E9 can by typed in but none the others like =E8 =EA =E0 =E2 . I can ty= pe these > letters anywhere ( as you can see ) but not in emacs. > My OS is Ubuntu 13.10 ( just upgraded ) Are you running Emacs in X11 or from a terminal? If you can type in those characters anywhere then it should work within emacs too. It makes no sense to me. Therefore I am going to ignore that and simply give generic keyboard configuration advice as if I had not read it. Perhaps some of it might even be useful. You can use C-x 8 in Emacs as the compose key for most common sequences. For example C-x 8 ` e for =E8 and so forth. See the emacs "22.18 Unibyte Editing Mode" section of the manual. That can be used even on keyboards that are not configured for the compose key. (Such as if logged in remotely from a foreign keyboard.) However not all compose key sequences are available within emacs. Only the compose key sequences for the latin1 character set. Use C-x 8 C-h to list out a full list of C-x 8 translations available. But that only works within emacs. Therefore I think you will be better off if you configure your system to input those characters at the system level. Then it will work correctly everywhere. So instead of learning an emacs specific way I would set up a global system way. On Debian (and I assume on Ubuntu which is a fork) you can configure your keyboard to create a compose key. sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration That asks what to set up for AltGr and Compose. I select Right Alt for AltGR and Menu for Compose. (I also select the X terminate key of control-alt-backspace.) That resulted in this configuration in the /etc/default/keyboard file. XKBOPTIONS=3D"lv3:ralt_switch,compose:menu,terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp" That will take effect the next time X is started. But you can dynamically change the running session by calling the setxkbmap command to set it for the running session. setxkbmap -model pc104 -layout us -option compose:menu -option terminat= e:ctrl_alt_bksp Select the layout appropriate to your system. The above is for my US keyboard. That sets up the Compose key. (As well as the X terminate key. You might not want that. The key sequence kills the current X session and logs you out immediately.) At that point you should be able to use the right menu key as the compose key. The choice of Right Alt or Right Control might be most general as all PC keyboards have those keys. My laptop does not have a right logo key. It does have a menu key. Other keyboards have a Right Logo key. People must simply pick one of the several possibilities and there is no single right answer. Here are some possible selections that you might select one of them and try. setxkbmap -model pc104 -layout us -option compose:rctrl setxkbmap -model pc104 -layout us -option compose:menu setxkbmap -model pc104 -layout us -option compose:rwin To activate an AltGr key (another way to create special characters) use the -variant altgr-intl option. Here is another example. setxkbmap -model pc104 -layout us -variant altgr-intl -option compose:r= ctrl -option terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp With that you get both the Compose key and the AltGr key. Both work. You can either build the characters with Compose ' e for =E9 or can use the AltGr e for =E9. Personally I prefer the compose key method over the AltGr method. It works better with my brain. Select the one you prefer. This following file documents the compose key sequences. Browse that file to determine what sequence you need for the characters you will be typing in. /usr/share/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose That lists many useful combinations. Searching for a desired character cut and pasted into search yields the input keys needed to produce it. Very useful. Here are some common compose key sequences. Type the keys one after the other. Tap, tap, tap. Do not hold down the compose key as it is not a shift key and not a control key. Here are just a few of the possibilities. =E2 =3D Compose ^ a =C5 =3D Compose o A =E8 =3D Compose ` e =FC =3D Compose " u Since you are using Ubuntu and the system input method is system specific you might want to ask this question on the ubuntu-user mailing list. Or if you decide something is a bug you might want to submit a bug into the Ubuntu bug tracker. Because other system will configure this in their own unique ways. Hope that helps, Bob