[ltp] Typing French Characters on English Keyboard

[Eben King]

On Thu, 16 Dec 2004, morpheus wrote:

> I realize this is not a Thinkpad question, but I noticed there are lots
> of French people on this list, so here goes...
> I'm trying to learn French, and I'd like to be able to type the accented
> characters on my English keyboard.  I've tried changing the keyboard
> layout, but that just re-maps the keys so they don't match what's on the
> keyboard.  Is there a way to do this while retaining my keyboard layout
> (which is Japanese by the way). Should I just register lots of keyboard
> shortcuts using CTRL-ALT combos?
> Your help is appreciated.

If you just want to be able to create the accented characters then:

On my desktop, I put "xmodmap -e 'keycode 110 = Multi_key'" into ~/.xsession
(might be called .xinitrc or .Xsession ... I have them all linked together).  
Keycode 110 is pause/break on this keyboard.  Use xev to find the keycode of
a sacrificial key.  Then I can type "pause/break e '" and get "é".

That's too cumbersome for more than the occasional accented character, but 
it doesn't remap the keyboard.

-- 
-eben    ebQenW1@EtaRmpTabYayU.rIr.OcoPm    home.tampabay.rr.com/hactar

          Q: What kind of modem did Jimi Hendrix use?
          A: A purple Hayes.