Thorsten Glaser writes: > >I think it is easier a compose key, which allows you define non ascii > >characteres using keystrokes (compose-key ' a -> á). This is the solution > >use in my USA keyboard and could generate spanish accents. > > Sure, that works too, and I use it for things like ① but Compose > takes three keystrokes (up to five) sequentially, while Meta takes > two or three in parallel (the “up to” is the shift key).
Well, you can define multiple compose keys to make things easier. I used to have ' ` ^ generate dead accents, so I could get most accented characters in just two keystrokes (e.g., ' e → é), while using the compose key for other things (math symbols, typography, Greek letters…). I don’t do that anymore, since typing ' ' to get a single ' is too hard to get used to. > The nice thing about ASCII and the QWERTY layout is that it has > all ASCII characters easily available, so you can enter *all* > latin1-subset-of-Unicode characters with just it. I can appreciate that but memorizing the layout of ISO-8859-1 to do it seems arcane. The mnemonics I define for compose are easier (if a bit slower to type), and even the X11 defaults aren’t too bad. -- Anthony J. Bentley
