how to enter accent characters

[Raul Acevedo <raul cantara com>]

I apologize if this is obvious or the wrong place to ask... but how do I
enter simple accented characters into a GNOME 2 application, without
using the Character Palette applet?

I've looked over an hour online, and while there's plenty of info on
technical details of i18n, gtk input method code, and input method
selection, I haven't found anything that says how to simply enter a
single accented character into a GNOME app.  Help!

Any pointers to good user end documentation on this would also be
appreciated. 

Raul