Compose key: accent before or after?

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1

Coming from XFCE I was used to start composing with the accent and then the letter. In Plasma 5 (on X11), it is the other way around. This sometimes leads to annoying workarounds to type “beëdigd”. OK, I get that that is something to get used to.

Funny thing I finally got the WinCompose app working on my Windows laptop at work and that uses the exact sequence as I was used to on xfce, so now I have to different ways to compose characters.

Is there a way to switch it around or at least make it work both ways? I mean, accent before or after the letter?

Also, some composed characters, like the en-dash or em-dash (compose+dash dash for en-dash, compose+dash dash dash for m-dash) does not work.

I guess the definition of keys is different than I was used to. I remember there was a text file that I could check (and even edit, of course) on xfce. Is that how it works on Plasma 5 as well?

Thanks!

2

Something else I just found… I live in Sweden now but am using a US-Intl keyboard on both work and home laptops.

Swedish has äö and the a with ring that I now realise is also different from what I was used to.

I think I need to change the definitions of the composed characters…

3

And some more I found out… I had “English US” with variant “AltGr Unicode combining”. Now I selected US Intl dead keys and it works differently. Still not what I am looking for, since dead keys always work and as a programmer I use a lot of `´` and `¨` that I don´t want to type and press space to to get.

So this way, the accept does come first. But still giving other problems.

But apparently it’s the keyboard layout determines the way the dead keys work.

I’ve tried all layouts that have a hint of compose or dead keys or AltGr but none use proper composing. I want to compose o+a to do the Scandinavian a-ring.

Any hints on how to solve this is much appreciated. I would gladly spend a day on editing a list of composed characters to get it how I want! :slight_smile:

4

Aaand more… :slight_smile: Learning a lot here! :slight_smile: I now have something that might be working as expected! Now using “English (Western Europe AltGr dead keys)” but now I set the compose key to something else. It was set to right-alt, which was probably conflicting with AltGr. I now have the dead keys with AltGr from the keyboard layout and compose with right-win.

OK, no dead keys plus right-alt for compose would be better but at least I can compose å— now. The “English (US, euro on 5)” also works, right-alt is for the euro on 5 and nothing else.

5

you can try to find a keyboard layout with the keys you need on it AltGr (ISO shift), search the keyboard layouts for ‘us en” and maybe include “int” to see the layouts you can look thru

the preview button lets you bring them up in window you can screen shot for study.

you can also make your own keyboard layout, it’s not that bad.

the compose feature, if you want to keep using that, is easier to customize

just make a .XCompose file in your home dir and add to it the sequences you want to have access to, then you can put the characters in the order you are used to (accent first).

like this:

include "%L"

<Multi_key> <a> <h> : "̂" U0302
<Multi_key> <b> <h> : "ɷ"
<Multi_key> <minus> <minus> <slash> 	: "‒"	U2012 # FIGURE DASH

and so on…

here’s my custom keyboard layout thread

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6

beëdigd

Try Composee" to get ë

7

works either order for me on kubuntu because many of the compose lines are doubled up so that either order works.

chalk (another) one up for kubuntu.

8

I suspect it might use the default Compose from upstream in X11 (like Fedora does)?

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9

could also be the language, since my Compose file is located in /usr/share/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose

op doesn’t say what language they are using.

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10

Right, if you dig around the upstream source you can see the files for various languages.

It’s indeed more likely to be a language difference than a distro difference.

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11

That’s what I got and want to avoid for reasons I mentioned.

12

Ah, didn’t realise that could also be a factor. Everything on my system is set to British English, I don’t use any other language. Locales might use Swedish for currency, numbers, and (most importantly) date format (since they use yyyy-mm-dd here).

Does that change things?

13

beë can be typed with:
beCompose“e AND beComposee”

Sorry, I just typed it the wrong way; but typing either way works the same…

Check out the Compose file - I’m using the one from US English, but I’m sure you can just design your own in .XConfig.

14

the compose file is under each language section so my us english compose file is found in

/usr/share/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose

you can run locale to see which folder to look in under LANG=

LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=en_US
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC=en_US.UTF-8
LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF-8
LC_NAME=en_US.UTF-8
LC_ADDRESS=en_US.UTF-8
LC_TELEPHONE=en_US.UTF-8
LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8
LC_IDENT
15

I use an ~/.XCompose file:

include "%S/en_US.UTF-8/Compose"
<Multi_key> <t> <u>                     : "👍"  U1F44D # THUMBS UP SIGN

The en_US compose file with over 5,000 mappings is far the most comprehensive but only some locales’ Compose files include it, so including it in ~/.XCompose might help.

I seem to recall that someone said it works with Wayland.

16

errata: you have extraneous > in your first reference to the custom file.

also, it’s worth noting that whatever you include means your additions must be unique, so that if you add the <t> <u> composition you need to verify first that <t> <u> does not already exist in the included file.

they are case sensitive, so <T> <U> would work but <t> <u> <x> would just give you whatever the original character was for <t> <u> and follow it with an x

and yes in spite of the X11 naming it all still does work in wayland.

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17

Well yes, it does - but yours is slightly sucky - and ‘tu’ is a bit tooooo short a cut…

The trickiest part is that it’s easy to create clashes… I make notes whenever I change something to avoid such clashes (can’t remember which ones now 'cos I got to 333 lines already - so it’s altogether TL;DR…

  • :light_bulb: If you use ‘tu’ for ‘thumbs up’ then you won’t be able to get your tux :penguin::red_exclamation_mark::red_exclamation_mark:

:penguin: :+1: :brain:

<Multi_key> <t> <u> <x>             : "🐧"   U1f427 # PENGUIN
<Multi_key> <b> <r> <a> <i> <n> 	:"🧠" # brain
<Multi_key> <t> <h> <u>             : "👍"  # thumb up

Just remember, Discourse won’t let you post any :poop:

18

I have advertised many times the Eurkey keyboard layout, but from the responses (if any) I wonder if anyone uses it. I use it since many years and I can write with it what I need to write.
This is the layout, does it have all you need, or do you need more special characters:

EURKEY
EURKEY2395×760 165 KB

Adding it to your system is pretty easy:
Open KDE System-settings full screen
Click in the left column: Keyboard
Click in the 2nd column: Keyboard
On the far right select Enable and then click Add
In the new window type eurkey, click the line with eurkey and click OK
You can set a key-combo to switch between this layout and another
That’s it, you get the extra keys with the Alt-Gr key (right side of the space bar), in combination with shift

Result  Used key(s)
4       4
$       shift 4
£       altgr 4
¥       altgr+shift 4
3 Likes
19

I used to use it a lot for work, to get greek letters, most often Δ and μ.

20

when i made my custom keyboard i borrowed some of the ideas from this one but ultimately ended up with something rather different.

symbolic-geek
symbolic-geek1978×794 173 KB

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