Compose Key (Composition key) is a key that combined with others allows us to make special characters (ñ, á, ü) and symbols (¢, ©) in an easy way, generally this is very useful when our keyboard does not correspond to our region ( I use an English keyboard, there are no ñ nor accents)
To activate the compose key in a distribution of Linux with Xfce they have to do the following:
sudo gedit /etc/default/keyboard
They authenticate as root and a file will open, it is the one we are going to edit.
In the file we look for XKBOPTIONS = »»
We change that to XKBOPTIONS = »compose: ralt»
In this step we have granted alt right to Compose Key, but you can put some other like lalt, rwin, lwin.
We save, we restart our Linux and that's it.
Examples:
Compose Key + ~ + n = ñ
Compose Key + “+ u = ü
Compose Key + '+ o = or
Compose Key + | + c = ¢
Compose Key + c + o = ©
You don't have to complicate your life so much. You just have to put the keyboard layout (if it is in English) in US International with dead keys. In this way with the Alt Right + N we will have as a result Ñ
😀
Exact! It's what I do.
Hi Elav. Your comment is valid in the case you mention. But this composition key can go much further. In my case, it will save me a lot of work. I use a lot of symbols / special characters and, among the various ways I have to work with them, are: manually insert ONE character; copy and paste the characters from a file where I have them all organized; use the Unicode symbol by searching for it previously in a table; install a virtual keyboard (this one I have not tried).
Many thanks to the author for sharing this information. Xfce never ceases to amaze me. This trick will save me a lot of time and make my work easier. I just looked for more information about it and found this manual: http://hellebaard.nl/publicaties/book/book-compose-key-sequence-reference-guide-2012/ I already put it on my wish list, heh heh.
Oh, and again to you, Elav: I really miss the articles you published about Xfce. I really miss them a lot ... 🙁
Tell me how it doesn't work for me!
For example, if I want to write: cão (dog) doing as you say I get: cæo
It depends on the compose key you have, for example on my keyboard it is alt right and it would be:
Alt right + ~ + a = ã
it won't let me keep it
Hello, thank you very much for the contribution.
I live, read and write to you from Portugal and here there are also symbols and letters that are very frequent and different from Spanish such as ã â ò õ Ã and etc ...
Thank you very much, a useful tip and much more practical than copying and pasting from the character map (writing like that was hell).
thank you .. I'm glad it served 😀
what does it mean to restart linux? reboot session ??
Normally restarting the session is sufficient.
Hello friends,
Are they still around?
I just upgraded my LinuxLite to version 4.2. Right Alt Gr key does not work for me for AltGr + ~ + n case. This key works for other characters in the third position of the keyboard (German) such as @ or € or | or \, except for the ñ that I need so much in Spanish. I already tried in keyboard settings and editing the above mentioned file. It does not work.
I appreciate any recommendation