Re: Unicode character entry

[John Jason Jordan <johnxj comcast net>]

On Tue, 1 Jun 2010 08:27:24 +0300
Simos Xenitellis <simos lists googlemail com> dijo:

>> If I upgrade my Fedora 11 to Fedora 13, will I still be able to use
>> Ctrl-Shift-u + Unicode value? If so, do I have to change the default
>> settings somehow?
>
>The Ctrl+Shift+u + UnicodeValue feature is available in gtk+
>applications which means that it works in Fedora 13 and future
>versions of the distribution.

What if the application I need to use is not a gtk+ application?
In Fedora 11 Ctrl+Shift+u + Unicode value works in all applications.

>The "complication" may appear  if you enable Chinese, Korean, Japanese
>or similar complex "input method" support. In those cases, the input
>method is changed to IBus which currently does not appear to support
>the Ctrl+Shift+U UnicodeValue feature.

I need to enable "complex Asian layout" in OOo, but only in OOo. Yet I
also need to use Ctrl+Shift+u + Unicode value in OOo and other apps.

>However, in your case where you require IPA support, the situation
>appears to be easy;
>the gtk+ library already has a special input method for IPA, which, in
>addition, supports Ctrl+Shift+U UnicodeValue at the same time.
>To test,
>1. open the GNOME text editor (in Applications/Accessories/Text editor)
>2. in the editor area, right-click and select Input Methods; select
>IPA from the list.
>3. now type as you would in IPA. For example, ae→æ, : → ː
>I am not familiar with more details of IPA; I suppose all characters
>work and you may have to experiment a bit to find the key
>combinations.

It would appear that someone has tried to create keyboard shortcuts for
some of the IPA characters. There are hundreds of thousands of possible
combinations of characters and diacritics. There could not possibly be
shortcuts for all of them.

>How to you write IPA in OpenOffice? If you right-click in OpenOffice
>there is no InputMethod menu. For gtk+ apps like OpenOffice, you can
>run in the terminal

In OOo I type Ctrl+Shift+u + Unicode value, followed by a space. 

>export GTK_IM_MODULE=ipa
>
>and then start 'oowriter' from the same terminal window. The IPA input
>method will be selected.
>
>If you want to make IPA the default input method in your distribution?
>You can add 'GTK_IM_MODULE=ipa' in /etc/environment and restart.
>
>Their might be a GUI way to better do this in your distribution; I
>haven't checked for this recently.
>
>You also mention combining diacritics; as far as I know, there are no
>keyboard layouts with combining diacritics yet so you can only do them
>with ISO 14755 (Ctrl+Shift+U). However, I believe that you can use
>precomposed characters; if the character (with some accent) is shown
>at http://www.unicode.org/charts/ then GNOME can type if as long as
>you select an appropriate keyboard layout. Such appropriate keyboard
>layouts are the US English International and the default British
>English ones.

I cannot believe that the "IPA input method" is going to work. Suppose
I need to type a ɨ (barred i) with a combining diacritic for breathy
voice (Unicode 324), e.g., [ɨ̤]. Even an English syllabic r requires a
combining diacritic, e.g., [ɹ̩]. There are no fonts that contain all
the possible combinations of glyphs and combining diacritics as single
characters. It's not like typing French or German.

It appears that Fedora 11 is the last version of Fedora I will be able
to use.