All I want to do is type a few macrons and acutes so I can do my latin homework, but no. Instead I spent about 30 minutes trying to figure out how to do this in Gnome. I first found scim, but that was not useful at all and I’m not even sure if it can do what I want. So I discovered that Gnome has intl. keyboard layouts. I thought ok this is what i want! I added the Dvoark intl. keyboard layout and began to try to type with it. No luck with this one either. Gnomes keyboard viewer shows an additional set of characters available on the keyboard, but no where could I find information on how to use these characters. Maybe it is easy to do. Maybe I am juts being an idiot. The fact still remains that I can’t even type an acute after spending over 30 minutes trying to figure out how. I normally use my mac for these kind of things and figured out how do use its international keyboard layouts in only a few minutes (however my mac is kind of indisposed at the moment so I will not be using it.)
It seems from what I have read that it is much easier in KDE than it is in Gnome (or maybe that Gnome just doesn’t work and KDE does), but I like Gnome and don’t want to have to switch to KDE just to be able to type. It may be unfair to say a thing like this will stop people from using linux as this problem does not really seem to be with linux but with Gnome, However most people do not look at a computer and see a desktop manager and applications running on it; they see magic. If they can’t use this magic the whole thing is bad.
The point I am trying to make is that if it takes more than 5 minutes to figure out how to do a basic (gui) function than the process is broken.
Tags: anger, doesn't work, dvorak, gnome, international, kde, latin homework, linux, rant, typing
April 29, 2009 at 12:06 am |
SCIM will do what you want if you have the right input methods installed, but I’ve never figured out how to set it up.
To use an international layout, you’ll need to know what your level-3 selector is. It’s generally alt-gr (the right alt key) by default. The first two levels are the normal and shifted keys, and this key selects the extra characters that it’s showing you.
In addition to those, it also has dead keys, which work just like Mac OS, except they’re mapped differently. For an acute, you type alt-gr with ‘, and then the letter you want it on. And there are also composite keys. You type both while holding down the alt-gr key and get a combination, like a+e for æ.
But neither is working for me at the moment. As I have things set up now, the international characters are scattered stupidly all over the keyboard, and hardly any layouts have macrons. Of course it’s always possible to find or make a new layout.