Re: Unicode character entry

[Dylan McCall <dylanmccall gmail com>]

> I found some advice to use ibus instead, but so far I've not been able to
> get ibus to do what I need without having it interfere with my normal
> typing. I just need a quick way to type common symbols found in English text
> (e.g. an em-dash).

Well, as a workaround, I suggest you stop torturing yourself with
memorized character codes and configure a compose key! In Gnome, that
can be turned on with Keyboard Preferences / the Configuration button
in the Layout section. Unfold the Compose Key section, and pick one. I
use Right Alt. (Sorry, I'm not in front of a Gnome desktop right now
so I can't be any clearer).

Now you can input a special character by pressing the compose key,
followed by two characters that you think would combine to form it.
For example, Compose + o + c creates ©.
Your em-dash is compose + minus + minus.

Basically anything you could possibly want is there, including opening
/ closing quotation marks, fractions, some math symbols, super /
subscripts, and accented characters.

Here's a table I found with a web search:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/GtkComposeTable

And I, for one, wish the thing was enabled by default ;)


Take care,
Dylan