For obvious physical reasons, your keyboard cannot contain all possible character combinations. This problem was recognized long ago by the X11 people, who came out with (IMHO) a beautiful and elegant solution: compose a.k.a. multi_key. This will let you type all accented and diacritics characters needed in latin languages and encodings, as well as some ASCII characters that your keyboard may be missing (such as {}). In this short howto I will show how to enable it in a Linux PC with the Gnome desktop.
IMHO the simplest way to enable the compose key in Gnome is to bind it to the left "windows" key (that is otherwise unused AFAIK) by using the Gnome keyboard preferences applet, as show in this image
To use the Compose key: press and release it ; then press and release other two keys in sequence, and they will be combined to form one character.
Examples of combinations (where I list the two keys and the resulting char)
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represent only the opinion and work of the author and not that of the
Scuola Normale Superiore.
Please pay a lot of attention. In May 1997 Italian parliament passed a
privacy law that makes it illegal to collect or trade information about
individuals or companies without their prior written approval; this
well
includes addresses, telephone numbers AND e-mail addresses.
Similair laws exist also in the U.S.A.: "By US Code Title 47,
Sec.227(a)(2)(B), a computer/modem/printer meets the definition of a
telephone fax machine. By Sec.227(b)(1)(C), it is unlawful to send any
unsolicited advertisement to such equipment. By Sec.227(b)(3)(C), a
violation of the aforementioned Section is punishable by action to
recover actual monetary loss, or $500, whichever is greater, for each
violation."
Since I am a USA national, I appeal also to these laws. I DO NOT GIVE
YOU MY CONSENT. YOU MUST DELETE ANY REFERENCE TO ME, IMMEDIATELY.
Regards, A. Mennucci