[PLUG] Changes in Gnome Unicode character input method

[Dale Snell]

On Mon, 31 May 2010 23:43:55 -0700
John Jason Jordan <johnxj at comcast.net> wrote:

> In a recent discussion on the Gnome e-list it has been brought to my
> attention that in Fedora 13/Gnome the input method for Unicode
> characters has changed from Ctrl-Shift-u + Unicode value to iBus
> something-or-another. The gist of it, as far as I have been able to
> determine, is that you will have to use a keyboard layout to type
> special characters, although there is an option to continue to use
> Ctrl-shift-u +Unicode value for gtk+ apps provided you launch the app
> from a special command telling it to use the old way. If your app is
> not a gtk+ app you're screwed.
> 
> I am hoping someone here can shed some light on this, as it is
> critical to me. For several years I have happily typed characters
> with combining diacritics for linguistics using Ctrl-shift-u, which
> delightfully works system-wide in all applications. 

John,

IBus allows this sort of thing, you just have to have the right input
method installed and active.  (IBus is a framework for a large number
of input methods.)  The easiest way is probably to use Yumex and sort
for ibus in All Packages.  Make sure that ibus-gtk and ibus-m17n are
installed, plus any others you might have an interest in (e.g., ibus-qt
for the KDE folks). You'll probably have to re-boot to get it all
running.

Assuming that IBus is running, you should have an icon in the
notification area that looks kind of like a keyboard with a globe in
front of it.  Right click on that and select Preferences.  Select the
Input Methods tab.  From the "Select an input method" drop down, find
"Other" at the bottom of the list.  It will have sub-items of Rawcode,
Latn-Pre and Latn-Post.  The Latn- entries allow for a reasonable set
of European diacritics to be selected, though by no means all of them.
Latn-Pre lets you select the accent before you type the character you
want accented.  Latn-Post is (obviously) the other way around; it also
has a lot more accents available.  I think that what you want, though,
is Rawcode.  (I just tried it -- I'd never used Rawcode before -- and
it seems to work.  Typing a "b" and then <ctrl-shift-u> 324 [on the
numeric keypad] gave me a lowercase b with a dieresis underneath it.)

Anyway, I hope this helps.

--Dale
__
"Never try to out-stubborn a cat."