Re: Character for plural Latin, "ae"

[David Wright]

On Thu 25 Jan 2018 at 10:19:33 (+0100), Werner Arnhold wrote:
> On Linux there is in many environments as e.g. bash command line or vi a
> way to enter Unicode characters by hex number. You press
> <Ctrl>-<Shift>-u, then see a litte underlined "u", then enter hex
> number, followed by a blank. Then the character is displayed. So:
> 
> <Ctrl>-<Shift>-ue6_  is æ
> <Ctrl>-<Shift>-ub0_  is °
> <Ctrl>-<Shift>-ua7_  is §
> 
> where "_" means a blank.

Wow, that's a lot to remember.

Why not just use the Compose key in your X server? Set this in the
appropriate way for your distribution. In Debian one populates
/etc/default/keyboard with lines like:

XKBMODEL="latitude"
XKBLAYOUT="gb"
XKBVARIANT=""
XKBOPTIONS="compose:caps,terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp"
BACKSPACE="guess"

Because I've never needed a [Caps Lock], I use that as my [Compose] key.
Then just press   [Compose] a e   to type æ.

And if you can't remember the combination, just guess.
Chances are, you'll be right. Thus:

[Compose] o e œ
[Compose] a " ä
[Compose] A " Ä
[Compose] o / ø
[Compose] o o °
[Compose] a ` à
[Compose] , c ç
[Compose] c c č
[Compose] - L £
[Compose] ^ 1 ¹
[Compose] ~ n ñ
[Compose] 1 2 ½
[Compose] < < «

Some of these may depend on what locale you're using; obviously
some languages will set the keyboard layout so as not to need
compose sequences for frequent characters.

> Am Mittwoch, den 24.01.2018, 16:50 -0600 schrieb Karlin High:
> > On 1/24/2018 4:26 PM, Son_V wrote:
> > > Today I use Windows and Frescobaldi 2.18
> > 
> > Frescobaldi has menu options for special characters.
> > 
> > Windows has the Character Map program, charmap.exe that allows selection 
> > and copying special characters.
> > 
> > That program will also display the alt-codes for some of them. These 
> > allow typing special characters by holding down the ALT key and typing 
> > numbers on the numeric keypad.
> > 
> > ALT+0230 æ
> > ALT+0176 °
> > ALT+0167 §
> > 
> > Pick your favorite method, any of them can do the job. And you can even 
> > just copy and past the thing from here: æ

Cheers,
David.