How I learned to implement a keyboard that lets me type in Spanish
<< First, < Previous, Next >, Latest >>
Hosted by Ahuka on 2020-10-02 is flagged as Clean and is released under a CC-BY-SA license.
Tags: Spanish, Language learning, typing foreign characters.
Listen in ogg,
spx, or
mp3 format. | Comments (2)
Part of the series: Languages
About human languages, including learning them and speaking them
I decided to use my time spent in relative isolation to do something productive and learn another language. I picked Spanish because I am hoping to visit Mexico and other Latin American countries whenever the plague lifts. I decided to document this for anyone who wants to know what options I found and how they have worked for me so far. This is the third part where I explain how I implemented the US International Keyboard on a variety of platforms. This lets me type characters that Spanish uses which do not appear on a standard US English keyboard. And best of all, it a purely free software fix.
Comments
Comment #1 posted on 2020-10-03T14:49:29Z by Gumnos
Using the X "Compose" key
When typing in Spanish or French, I've long used the Compose key in X. In my startup script (~/.xinit, ~/.xsession, or for me as a fluxbox user, ~/.fluxbox/startup) I have the following line
setxkbmap -option compose:caps
which turns my Caps key (which I never otherwise use) into a Compose key (here are ways to use other keys instead, if you prefer).
I can then type "{compose}{e}{'}" to get "é" or I type "{compose}{n}{~}" to get "ñ" or "{compose}{c}{,}" to get "ç". Similarly I can use "{compose}{?}{?}" and "{compose}{!}{!}" to get "¿" and "¡". There are hundreds of these composable characters and many are intuitive enough that I can guess them if I don't know them cold.
Should work out of the box on Linux & BSD systems running X, and work with pretty much every X application.
Comment #2 posted on 2020-10-31T14:17:54Z by Ken Fallon
Cheat sheet
https://cheatography.com/davechild/cheat-sheets/ubuntu-compose-key-combinations/pdf_bw/
<< First, < Previous, Next >, Latest >>
Leave Comment
Note to Verbose Commenters
If you can't fit everything you want to say in the comment below then you really should record a response show instead.
Note to Spammers
All comments are moderated. All links are checked by humans. We strip out all html. Feel free to record a show about yourself, or your industry, or any other topic we may find interesting. We also check shows for spam :).
