how to disable compose mode?

["Quiring, Sam" <Sam Quiring windriver com>]

Greetings,

 

I just started using a new install of Ubuntu 9.04 this morning.  I am getting very confusing (for me) behavior just typing into the Term (Gnome Terminal) window.  The first thing I noticed was that single quote (') was behaving strange:  If I type one quote, nothing appears on the command line.  Figuring I had not hit the key hard enough, I typed it again and a an end quote character appeared (looks like the opposite of the begin quote (`)).  This end-quote is not treated as a normal quote (') character by command line processing.  For example if I issue the command:

 

> echo 'foo'

foo

 

But if I enter this command (using <end-quote> to represent the single end-quote character which-I-cannot-type-into-this-email):

 

> echo <end-quote>foo<end-quote>

<end-quote>foo<end-quote>

 

The quotes are not stripped off.

 

I'm having a similiar issue with the double quote (") character.  I have to type it twice for something to appear and what appears is an end-double-quote, the opposite of a begin-double-quote.  Also, when I type a tilde(~) nothing happens, I have to type two tildes to get one to appear on my command line.

 

Wow.  All I want to do is type in normal commands where the text I type in is the same as the text on my keyboard.

 

I've spent almost two hours trying to figure out what is wrong.  It looks like my terminal is in "compose mode", something I had never heard of before this morning.  When I use the Vi editor, it is also in compose mode.

 

How can I turn this behavior off?  Why is it turned on?

 

-Sam