Very Computer

Hi,
        I am desperate and quite iritated at this point.  I have read the
entire manpage for xkeycaps and I still can't figure out how to map a
CONTROL-E to an e with an accent to make my spanish teacher happy.  This
is one of the few things that keeps pushing me back to Microsoft crap.  I
don't know how to generate the international characters in netscape or
emacs or anything and I am very FRUSTRATED.  If you could please help me
I would greatly appreciate it.  No one seems to know how to do this.  T

Thanks,

Matt

First you need to run the program in the proper locale. Are you doing
that? Second you need to use either a mode-shift or a compose sequence
to get the full ISO8859-1 character set.

To use mode-shift, you need two things: 1) is a Mode_switch (Alt Gr) key
on your keyboard, and 2) keys with additional mode-shifted characters
assigned to them. (You can edit your XF86Config file to automatically
give you the Mode_shift key on the Right-Control key, but for this we'll
just use old-style xmodmap commands.)

  1. Make Control_R be Mode_switch:

     % xmodmap -e "keysym Control_R = Mode_switch"

  2. To make a mode-shifted 'e' be ''

     % xmodmap -e "keysym e = e E eacute Eacute"

Use the mode-shift key like the shift key. Press and hold the
mode-switch key and then press 'e', and you'll get ''.

To use compose, you need a Multi_key (Alt Gr or Compose) key on your
keyboard. (You can edit your XF86Config file to automatically give you
this, but as before, I'll show you how to do this with xmodmap instead.)

  1. Make Alt_R be Multi_key (Alt Gr or Compose)

    % xmodmap -e "keysym Alt_R = Multi_key"

Again, make sure that your program is running the the correct locale
(e.g. `setenv LANG es_ES` before you run the program.) Now type
<Multi_key>, 'e', ''' and out will come ''

Simple right? I don't know what you'd need to do with xkeycaps to get
the same thing.

Quote:> I
> don't know how to generate the international characters in netscape

Quote:> or
> emacs

Quote:> or anything and I am very FRUSTRATED.  If you could please help me
> I would greatly appreciate it.  No one seems to know how to do this.  

--

Kaleb S. KEITHLEY

[posted and mailed]

    Matthew> Hi, I am desperate and quite iritated at this point.  I
    Matthew> have read the entire manpage for xkeycaps and I still
    Matthew> can't figure out how to map a CONTROL-E to an e with an
    Matthew> accent to make my spanish teacher happy.  This is one of
    Matthew> the few things that keeps pushing me back to Microsoft
    Matthew> crap.  I don't know how to generate the international
    Matthew> characters in netscape or emacs or anything and I am very
    Matthew> FRUSTRATED.  If you could please help me I would greatly
    Matthew> appreciate it.  No one seems to know how to do this.  T

 ?You mean like  ?

;-)

I can tell you how to do it in emacs, the Editor of the Gods.  You
need to have a version later than ?19.34? that supports Mule, the
multilingual environment.  Mule is built into emacs 20+; however, if
you're using the standard package that comes with RedHat 5.0, I
believe you will find that its multilingual support is deliberately
broken.  They screwed you to make a point -- they don't like Mule.  If
so, you'll have to replace that version of emacs to do this stuff.
Then get and install the leim (input methods) package from
gnu.ai.mit.edu or some gnu mirror.

I use the "prefix" library, so in .emacs I put

(load-library "latin-pre")

Now, to actually use the language support from the library, you simply
do a C-\ while in your document and you'll get a mini-buffer prompt
Input Method:  <tab> will give you the options, of course:

Possible completions are:
catalan-prefix                     esperanto-prefix
french-prefix                      german-prefix
irish-prefix                       latin-1-prefix
latin-2-prefix                     latin-3-prefix
portuguese-prefix                  spanish-prefix

'Prefix method' simply means that I type the composition character
first and then the alpha character, e.g., 'e produces the accented
e-character above, while ~? produces the upside-down question mark.

This only applies to actually inputting characters.  To read them you
have to set your system font to the iso-8859-1 character set if it
isn't already.  If you're using bash, you may have to enable the 8-bit
character display (which seems to be off by default). I put this line
in my .bashrc:

stty cs8 -istrip -parenb

I did not have this problem with csh.  Anyway, that should put you on
your way toward becoming 'multilingually-enabled.'  

There is a keyboard & console HOWTO that covers some of this stuff.
It didn't actually help me much, as it seemed to assume that I already
knew what I was doing!  But it will point you in the right directions,
i.e., setfont & loadkey.

mp

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