French/Spanish/German accents in Fedora with US Keyboard

[Rodolfo J. Paiz]

At 20:36 4/12/2004, you wrote:
>            Does anybody know how to configure Fedora Linux such that I can
>compose mails (pine) or documents and inserting French/Spanish/German
>accents? Right now when I try to paste somme accents in my Eterm/xterm, it
>gives me some junk!
>
>How do I insert the accents?
>
>Btw I have a US keyboard so please don't tell me to configure for other
>keyboards! Thanks.

Easy as pie. Set up your keyboard as type "us" with layout "us-acentos". In 
the graphical world, this is called "enabling dead keys." Done.

Those keys which represent accents like ' and " and ` and ~ and ^ will now 
be "dead keys." This means that nothing will happen if you press them 
once... the system will wait to see what key you press next. If you then 
press an "a" for example, you will get á or à or ä or â. Pressing ~ then n 
will get you ñ. The German umlaut (sp?) is achieved with the double-quote 
dead key, then the vowel.

In order to output the bare symbols like ' and " and ~, you press the dead 
key and then a space. Seems cumbersome at first, but get a little practice 
and your fingers will learn the moves very quickly. Works like a charm, and 
is the reason why I refuse to accept a computer with *any* layout other 
than US... configuring any other "international" keyboard is a bitch since 
you never know what kind it's supposed to be, and making it work becomes a 
lengthy, painful process of trial and error.

Cheers,


-- 
Rodolfo J. Paiz
rpaiz at simpaticus.com
http://www.simpaticus.com