Accented characters

[D. R. Evans]

Rosalind Mitchell said the following at 01/24/2008 04:10 PM :

> 
> There has to be a better way, even if only for the basic accented letters in 
> French, surely?  Using key sequences?  
> 

Yep. There are at least two ways, and which is preferable depends on the
frequency with which you have to switch languages/characters. I use both.

The first is to use the "compose" key. The details are too complex to put
into an e-mail message, so you'd probably do best to google something like
'linux compose key'. The compose key allows you to create individual
characters such as Þé£ and so on.

On my system, I created those three characters by hitting:
  right-ctrl-T right-ctrl-H
  right-ctrl-e '
  right-ctrl-L =

This is fine for occasional use, but if you need to sometimes type a bunch
of characters in a foreign language, you're better off to re-map the
keyboard by using System Settings | Regional & Language | Keyboard Layout.
I use that to keep a language icon in my system tray, so that by clicking
it I can go from a US keyboard to one for Ελλας (i.e., Greece). To get
that, I just clicked on the flag in the systray and typed "Ellaw".

HTH
  Doc