Inserting non ASCII chars in Linux: XCompose and AltGr

XCompose

/usr/share/X11/locale/compose contains thee compose table for various locales. Current locale is found with, err, locale. Strange that /s.

The tables below contain a handy reference for my most commonly used (default) altGr inserts with exceptions for ‘European’ diacritics, altGR+'+e for e acute ‘é’ etc. Since these are so commoly used– and there are so many of them– they are not worth listing.

Having realised that there were a couple of missing Old English letters (wynn and yogh), and only ash eth and thorn are represented in the defaults, I added to an seperate !/.XCompose file. This file is additive to the defaults.

So, whilst I was at that, I added a few IPA glyphs as well. And some Greek entries. The current .Xcompose, also included below.

For example…

<Multi_key> <w> <y>     : "ƿ"  # Latin Small Letter Wynn         U+01BF
<Multi_key> <W> <Y>     : "Ƿ"  # Latin Capital Letter Wynn       U+01F7
<Multi_key> <g> <h>     : "ȝ"  # Latin Small Letter Yogh         U+021D
<Multi_key> <G> <H>     : "Ȝ"  # Latin Capital Letter Yogh       U+021C

NB

In addition to using, say altGr+W+Y for “Ƿ”, one could equally use Ctrl+Shift+U+01F7

Common defaults

  • altGr + key1 + key2 [+key3] = result
key1 key2 result name
l = £ GBP
e = € Euro
r = ₹ Rupee
y = ¥ Yen
c | ¢ cent
. : ∵ because
: . ∴ therefore
o o ° degree
= _ ≡ identical
= / ≠ not equal
< = ≤ less or equal to
> = ≥ greater or equal to
+ - ± plus-minus
p ! paragraph (pilcrow)
s ! § section
t h þ thorn
d h ð eth
a e æ ash
o e œ oe-ligature

And some 3-keyers:

key1 key2 key3 result name
- - . – n-dash
- - - — m-dash
p o o 💩 m-dash

Current .XCompose

Resources