[B-Greek] Adding accents in Linux

Timothy S. Nelson wayland at wayland.id.au
Fri Jan 22 18:58:59 EST 2010


On Fri, 22 Jan 2010, peter pankonin wrote:

> Greetings, all:
>
> Since we're discussing Greek keyboards "off-list" ;)
>
> ...does anyone know how to type the accented letters in Linux? I'm
> currently having to copy and paste from kcharselect to type the
> accented letters.

 	Why, yes, I do know how to type accented characters in Linux :).

 	Obviously my dithering has resolved into recording my startling 
insights for posterity :).

> I'm guessing the keyboard combinations suggested by Randall are for a
> Windows computer...I haven't been able to find anything similar in
> Linux. Thanks.

 	Linux (Well, Fedora 11, anyway) has built-in support for a wide 
variety of keyboard layouts, and it is entirely possible to define your own 
should you dislike the existing ones.

 	Linux groups its keyboard layouts by language.  There are 6 different 
Greek layouts available.
-	Bare -- useless; no punctuation
-	Simple -- All the others are based on this, so you probably want one
 	of them, because they all have more characters
-	Basic -- Despite the name, this is probably the one you want.  I use
 	it.  It does polytonic.  It does ϝ (ϝαυ, "digamma").  It does
 	iota-subscript: ᾳ.  It does more stuff than any of the others.
 	Unfortunately, though, you still need to know Greek to type anything
 	intelligible 
-	Extended -- This is like "Simple", but with a few extra currency,
 	mathematical, and copyright symbols
-	Polytonic -- this is like extended, with a few extra things to support
 	polytonic.  I still recommend the "Basic" layout, because it does all
 	this and more 
-	No Dead Keys -- no polytonic; don't use it

 	This brings to my mind a few things about Linux keyboards you may need 
to know.
1.	Distro/desktop specific: There are different instructions depending on
 	what distro you're on, and what desktop environment you use.  For
 	example, I use Fedora with E17, but you might use Ubuntu with Gnome or
 	something.  I'll need to know what you're using before I can give more
 	specific advice. 
2.	Multiple layouts: The way linux works, you can have multiple layouts
 	installed at the same time, and use a special key-combination to
 	switch between them. 
3.	Level-3 shift: The way most non-English keyboards work, they have a
 	"Level 3 shift", which instead of allowing them to type two characters
 	(upper and lower case) with the one key, it allows them to type 4.
 	For example, on my Greek keyboard, I can get the following from one key:
 	Normal: γ
 	Shift: Γ
 	Level3: ϝ
 	Shift+Level3: Ϝ
 	If you want to type polytonic Greek or Iota subscripts, then you'll
 	need to use Level 3 characters.  Note that on my Greek layout, the
 	left Alt key acts as an Alt key, whereas the right-hand Alt key acts
 	as the Level 3 shift. 
4.	Dead keys: The way Linux handles the problem of accents is called
 	"dead keys".  Basically, you press the accent key first (and nothing
 	visible happens, hence the 'dead'), and then you press the letter
 	after, and then the accented letter appears.  This also applies to
 	iota subscript and the like. 
5.	Multiple keyboards: Linux can handle multiple keyboards.  I have an
 	ordinary (well, ordinary layout extra-special features) keyboard, and
 	I also got a cheap USB keyboard for typing non-English.  What I have
 	it configured for at the moment is: us(intl),gr(basic),il(biblical).
 	I also got some keyboard stickers from Hooleon for Greek and Hebrew
 	(make sure you get a colour that contrasts with your keyboard keys),
 	although unfortunately the keyboard stickers only do the letters;
 	you'll have to mark the accents yourself.  Anyway, all this
 	means that my normal keyboard behaves exactly like keyboards
 	everywhere in Australia and the USA, whereas my non-English keyboard,
 	as well as doing Greek, can also do Hebrew, and with the us(intl)
 	layout, I can type most of the languages of Western Europe (líké ðíß).
 	The main problem with secondary keyboards is that some of the keyboard
 	configuration programs don't handle them.  But in that case, let me
 	know, and I'll try to figure something out for you :).

 	HTH,

---------------------------------------------------------------------
| Name: Tim Nelson                 | Because the Creator is,        |
| E-mail: wayland at wayland.id.au    | I am                           |
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