Re: accented letters ( typing in )

[Bob Proulx <bob@proulx.com>]

Michel Chassey wrote:
> Running emacs from the ctrl + meta + F1 terminal produces weird chars when
> I try accented chars.

> I'm still a noob when setting up environment variables . Ubuntu keyboard
> system have not changed but maybe as one poster suggests it is a bug. The
> only thing that works right now is the CTRL + 8 compose method. I have
> tried changing input methods but no cigar .

What is produced in the terminal Without running emacs but just typing
in those characters?  If you start the terminal and then try typing in
those accented characters what is produced?

If it works in the terminal then it should work in emacs running in
the terminal.  If it doesn't work in the terminal then it can't work
in emacs running in the terminal either.

The terminal test is a good test of what the system supports outside
of emacs.  The GUI version of emacs uses a different input method
however.  Since you said you normally use the GUI version of emacs
then that part will still need to be solved.

> One question an OP has asked is how the apostrophe works and it gets typed
> in the first time. Another poster suggested a newer version of emacs and I
> will try that.

This emacs functionality has been quite stable for me across many
years of versions.  I really doubt it is an emacs bug that is causing
you this problem.  I use emacs 23 on many Debian systems and this
works for me.

You said you were running Ubuntu 13.10 with emacs 23.  That seems
unusual since I think Ubuntu 2013.10 would have been emacs 24.
Perhaps your system wasn't fully upgraded to 13.10?  I know that there
have been significant recent changes to the console and keyboard in
Debian and I assume in Ubuntu too.  Therefore I think that much more
likely.

It is good that the C-x 8 compose method is working and that is why it
is there.  To provide a system independent way to generate those
characters inside emacs.  Also it seems to be saying that emacs is
handling this okay.  If the system keyboard compose key entered those
then I believe it should handle it okay too.

Bob