Re: SuSE 9.3 Compose keys (right shift + ctrl)

Peter Niessen <[email protected]> :

> until SuSE 9.2, it was possible to use compose keys (right-shift +
> right-control) to compose diarhesis, accents, etc. if UTF-8 was
> de-selected. In 9.3 not anymore! How can I activate this feature
> again?

I cannot reproduce your problem. 

First of all, you don't need to de-select UTF-8 to use Compose, it
works in UTF-8 even better than in the legacy locales because UTF-8
can represent a lot more special characters than the legacy locales.

To find out why it doesn't work for you, can you please supply the
following information:

- Check if a Compose key is defined in your keyboard layout
  with the command 'xmodmap -pke | grep Multi_key'. The default
  on SuSE Linux in recent years should look like this:
  
    linux@g78:~> xmodmap -pke | grep Multi_key
    keycode 109 = Control_R Multi_key
    keycode 113 = ISO_Level3_Shift Multi_key
    keycode 116 = Super_R Multi_key
    linux@g78:~>

"Multi_key" is the compose key, i.e. by default it is on
Shift+RightControl, Shift+AltGr, and Shift+RightWindowsKey.

- Is only a special key combination not working on your
  system or does Compose fail to work at al for you?
  If only a special key combination fails, which one?

- What locale exactly are you using? Please give the output of
  the command 'locale'.

- Is the environment variable XMODIFIERS set?
  Check with 'env | grep XMODIFIERS'.

  It should be either unset or set to '@im=local'.

- Check whether a program which is known to support compose,
  for example 'xterm', reads the correct compose table:

mfabian@magellan:~$ XMODIFIERS=@im=local LANG=de_DE.UTF-8 strace -eopen -f xterm 2>&1 | grep -i ompose
open("/home/mfabian/.XCompose", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/locale/compose.dir", O_RDONLY) = 5
open("/var/X11R6/compose-cache/l2_030_35fe9fba", O_RDONLY) = 5
open("/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose", O_RDONLY) = 5
open("/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose", O_RDONLY) = 6
mfabian@magellan:~$

You see here that the compose table which is read in de_DE.UTF-8
locale is /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose.

In de_DE@euro locale, a different compose table is read:

mfabian@magellan:~$ XMODIFIERS=@im=local LANG=de_DE@euro strace -eopen
 -f xterm 2>&1 | grep -i ompose
open("/home/mfabian/.XCompose", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/locale/compose.dir", O_RDONLY) = 5
open("/var/X11R6/compose-cache/l2_030_23d0b406", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/locale/iso8859-15/Compose", O_RDONLY) = 5
open("/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/locale/iso8859-15/Compose", O_RDONLY) = 6
mfabian@magellan:~$

If you compare /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose with
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/locale/iso8859-15/Compose, you will see that the
latter is much shorter and supports far fewer characters than the
UTF-8 version.

-- 
Mike FABIAN   <[email protected]>   http://www.suse.de/~mfabian



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