Sisu and typing unicode in GNOME
1 September 2008
I have decided to finally make a serious go at trying to learn the Finnish language properly. The eventual aim is to be able to read (sing?) the poem Kalevala in its original Finnish.
Finnish has three more letters than the English alphabet: ä and ö are used in Finnish words, while å is hardly ever used, i.e. in Swedish loan words or names, such the Åland island in the Finnish Archipelago Sea which is perhaps not the best example as it is called Ahvenanmaa by Finnish speakers.
My laptop has an English keyboard, so I need a way of typing these extra letters in. Going through the graphical menu 'Accessories' and then to 'Character Map' is a bit of a chore and slows town typing and the spontaneity of it.
So there are keybindings to type in foreign (unicode) letters. They are outlined in an Ubuntu wiki page called GtkComposeTable. That page explains two approaches. The first way is to type the unicode values.
To do this you type Ctrl+Shift+U then while keeping hold of the Ctrl+Shift, type the following code for each letter:
| ä | e4 |
| ö | f6 |
| å | e5 |
| Ä | c4 |
| Ö | d6 |
| Å | c5 |
Typing in random codes is as unintuitive and distracting as using the character map. So there is a second approach. This I have not yet got my head around.
So there is a key called diaeresis (¨), which on the British keyboard is got by using Alt Gr and the left square bracket, so: AltGr+[
Now there is a key called 'compose', which by default is the right control key (RightCtrl). So we should be able to get an 'ä' using some combination of the following keys:
RightCtrl a AltGr+[
By bashing these keys randomly, I managed to occasionally get an ä, the same with ö also. However, I don't really get it.
Something I might explore is whether I can bind some easier and more rational key combination to ä and ö. E.g. AltGr-a and AltGr-o,
This is far as I have got so far. If anyone has any tips or has a better idea, please let me know.
1 Jani says...
Looks like typing letters with the umlaut (diaeresis) has been made particularly easy for those of us using a keyboard with Finnish keys and layout: compose isn't needed at all, and typing in the umlaut doesn't require a modifier key. So even if ä and ö didn't have their own keys, I could get away with just two keypresses: the diaeresis followed by an a or an o. In fact, it's pretty useful from time to time, for typing ü (diaresis + u), which isn't part of our own alphabet and thus isn't present on the keyboard, but is still pretty common e.g. in German names.
Posted at 1:05 a.m. on September 1, 2008
2 Lornix says...
ä <= compose, ", a ö <= compose, ", o å <= compose, o, a
Ä <= compose, ", A Ö <= compose, ", O Å <= compose, o, A
Order is important, as is case. Almost anything is generatable:
₤ € ¥ ¢ … ¿ ¡
all are preceeded by {compose}
(=L)(=e)(=Y)(|c)(..)(??)(!!)
Posted at 4:28 a.m. on September 1, 2008
3 Leif says...
On my Norwegian keyboard, the diaeresis is easily accessible, like on Jani's Finnish one. It's one of the few keys that doesn't advance the cursor, along with the tilde, circumflex and backtick (aka accent grave). It's probably the same on UK keyboards, so just try pressing AltGr+[, release, and then press a or o.
By the way, good luck with the Kalevala. Hyvä päivä!
Posted at 4:30 a.m. on September 1, 2008
4 Ciaran McCreesh says...
On a UK keyboard you do alt-gr+[ followed by a to get ä. You don't need the control key at all.
Posted at 5:02 p.m. on September 1, 2008
5 Toni says...
Hi,
You might want to add an xkb keymap. Make backups before you begin ;) And sorry about formatting.
in /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/gb, after "intl", add this:
partial alphanumeric_keys xkb_symbols "intl_fi" {
// Greetings from Finland
include "gb(intl)" name[Group1]="United Kingdom - International (with dead keys and ä & ö)";
key <AC01> { [ a, A, adiaeresis, Adiaeresis ] }; key <AD09> { [ o, O, diaeresis, Odiaeresis ] };
};
And declare your new variant in /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/xfree86.xml. Excerpt:
<layout> <configItem> <name>gb</name> <shortDescription>GBr</shortDescription> <description>United Kingdom</description> <languageList><iso639Id>eng</iso639Id></languageList> </configItem>
<variantList> <variant> <configItem> <name>intl</name> <description>International (with dead keys)</description> </configItem> </variant>
<variant> <configItem> <name>intl_fi</name> <description>International (with dead keys and ä and ö)</description> </configItem> </variant>
After you select this new variant in Gnome settings, you should have ä and ö available with AltGR + a/o (also with shift). Have fun!
Best regards, Toni
Posted at 6:05 p.m. on September 1, 2008
6 Jinks says...
I am from Germany but i use an US-layout keyboard since that's a lot easier for most my programming needs.
Now, having to also write the occassional german letter or email if ound this little gem somewhere around the internet.
Just put the following code into your ~/.Xmodmap and modify to your needs:
this changes CapsLock (the most useless key in computing history if you ask me :)) to be a modifier key used for all the following codes. So with CapsLock+a I get ä, Capslock+Shift+a renders Ä, the normal CapsLock functionality is also still available via Shift+Capslock.
Hope that helps, I for once do really like it.
Posted at 7:05 p.m. on September 1, 2008
7 andylockran says...
In ubuntu, I do ctrl, and the functions to the right of my keyboard for extra characters.
Such as: alt gr + ; + e for é
I'll post more tomorrow if you want them!
Posted at 11:24 p.m. on September 1, 2008
8 Zeth says...
Thanks everyone for your different solutions, absolutely fantastic. I have tried them all. The one from Ciaran McCreesh was the one I was subconsciously groping for.
Posted at 11:32 p.m. on September 1, 2008
9 Matteo says...
Well, you could also just switch the whole layout to the standard Finnish one only when you need to write in Finnish.
Have a look at the "keyboard layout indicator" applet for GNOME.
You can set up shortcuts to do this easily when needed (for example, I press both shift keys at the same time and I loop through the group of layouts I have defined there).
I find this better than modifying one self's layout because it forces you to learn how to use another country's keyboard and that might save you money if you'll ever visit those places and their internet cafes :-)
(I am from Italy so forgive my English)
Posted at 12:41 p.m. on September 20, 2008