Member Avatar for Xozz

How can I produce supertext in Linux?

edit: The name of this topic should be " produce supertext" in stead of " use supertext" but I think you all get t he point

Edited by Xozz
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A short, practical summary that fills the gaps in the thread: wanted the Windows-style behavior (apostrophe then e => e acute) and pointed at Compose and on-screen keyboards. Two easy, system-wide ways to get that behavior are: (A) a "US International (with dead keys)" layout to mimic Windows dead-key typing, and (B) a Compose key for flexible sequences. Pick the one you prefer.

To switch to the Windows-style dead-key layout (X11):

setxkbmap -layout us -variant intl

After that an apostrophe then e will produce e acute (U+00E9). To make it persistent on Debian/Ubuntu, add the settings to /etc/default/keyboard, for example:

XKBMODEL="pc105"
XKBLAYOUT="us"
XKBVARIANT="intl"
XKBOPTIONS=""

Then log out or reboot.

To use a Compose key (useful when you want many accents without changing layout):

setxkbmap -option compose:ralt

This makes Right-Alt the Compose key; press Compose, then apostrophe, then e to get e acute (U+00E9). For GNOME you can set the same option persistently with:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.input-sources xkb-options "['compose:ralt']"

KDE offers a GUI (System Settings > Input Devices > Keyboard > Advanced > Compose Key Position).

Other quick tips: Ctrl+Shift+U then the hex code (e9) Enter inserts U+00E9 in GTK apps. Make sure your locale is UTF-8 (for example LANG=en_US.UTF-8) so accents work everywhere. Note: setxkbmap affects X11 only; on Wayland sessions use the desktop settings or gsettings. If something still misbehaves, check current settings with setxkbmap -print -verbose 10 or localectl status.

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Member Avatar for rproffitt

I don't get the point. While I know of super and sub-script, I googled SUPERTEXT and well, what is it?

Member Avatar for Xozz

What I mean is accents. Like: à, è, ù

Member Avatar for rproffitt

I will have to guess again you need a quick recap of "how did we get here."

It all began long ago with the Typewriter then the Teletype Model 33. The binary code behind characters and computers was ASCII for the longest time.

The accents you ask about have never been called SUPERTEXT by anyone but hey, you clarified. To get to other character sets we are now using UNICODE and such. Any decent Word Processor (for Linux try LibreOffice) lets me select such with ease.

Edited by rproffitt because: Spelling correction.
Member Avatar for Xozz

I have LibreOffice installed. I see that you can select Special Characters. That's a way to produce characters with accents. But isn't there a way to get to those characters in the whole system? Like in Windows: typing ' and then e does the trick.

Member Avatar for Xozz

I think I know enough for now.

Member Avatar for rproffitt

I left out one major character encoding method in computing history. It is called by the acronym EBCDIC. It was at first a 6 bit system and later 8 bits. No accents there.

Member Avatar for Xozz

What I was aiming for is the Windows-way of bringing forth characters with accents. Now that I got to know the way of using UNICODE my need is a little bit decreased. Still, I someone knows how to get the Windows-way integrated in Linux I would be very happy! :-)

Member Avatar for rproffitt

  1. Try the Compose key method. Noted at https://askubuntu.com/questions/358/how-can-i-type-accented-characters-like-ë

  2. Use an on-screen keyboard. Since there are many "Windows" ways, I can't guess the method you wish.
    https://help.ubuntu.com/stable/ubuntu-help/keyboard-osk.html.en

Finally the answer is no. Windows, Linux and Apple differ. Here's an area they differ. If you wish to fix it, join those OS dev forums and start a new project to make it "work like Windows."

Member Avatar for Xozz

Thanks. That's the answer I was waiting for.

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