{"id":8465,"date":"2013-05-11T08:38:14","date_gmt":"2013-05-11T12:38:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/?p=8465"},"modified":"2025-02-21T16:47:02","modified_gmt":"2025-02-21T21:47:02","slug":"compose-yourself-raspberry-pi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/2013\/05\/11\/compose-yourself-raspberry-pi\/","title":{"rendered":"Compose yourself, Raspberry Pi!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Years ago, I worked in multilingual dictionary publishing. I was on the computing team, so we had to support the entry and storage of text in many different languages. Computers could display accented and special characters, but we were stuck with 8-bit character sets. This meant that we could only have a little over 200 distinct characters display in the same font at the same time. We’d be pretty much okay doing French & English together, but French & Norwegian started to get a little trying, and Italian & Greek couldn’t really be together at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We were very fortunate to be using Sun<\/a> workstations in the editorial office. These were quite powerful Unix machines, which means that they were a fraction of the speed and capabilities of a Raspberry Pi. Suns had one particularly neat feature:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Compose_key_on_Sun_Type_5c_keyboard\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

(source: Compose key<\/a>, Wikipedia.<\/em>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That little key marked \u201cCompose\u201d (to the right of the space bar) acted as a semi-smart typewriter backspace key: if you hit Compose, then the right key combination, an accented character or symbol would appear. Some of the straightforward compose key sequences are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/b><\/td>Compose +<\/strong><\/td> <\/b><\/td> <\/b><\/td><\/tr>
Accent<\/strong><\/td>First key<\/strong><\/td>Second key<\/strong><\/td>Result<\/strong><\/td>Example<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
Acute<\/td>\u2018<\/td>e<\/td>\u00e9<\/td>caf\u00e9<\/strong><\/i><\/td><\/tr>
Grave<\/td>`<\/td>a<\/td>\u00e0<\/td>d\u00e9j\u00e0<\/strong><\/i><\/td><\/tr>
Cedilla<\/td>,<\/td>c<\/td>\u00e7<\/td>soup\u00e7<\/strong>on<\/i><\/td><\/tr>
Circumflex<\/td>^<\/td>o<\/td>\u00f4<\/td>h\u00f4<\/strong>tel<\/i><\/td><\/tr>
Umlaut<\/td>\u201c<\/td>u<\/td>\u00fc<\/td>k\u00fc<\/strong>che<\/i><\/td><\/tr>
Ring<\/td>o<\/td>a<\/td>\u00e5<\/td>H\u00e5<\/strong>kon<\/i><\/td><\/tr>
Slash<\/td>\/<\/td>L<\/td>\u0141<\/td>\u0141<\/strong>ukasiewicz<\/i><\/a><\/td><\/tr>
Tilde<\/td>~<\/td>n<\/td>\u00f1<\/td>ma\u00f1<\/strong>ana<\/i><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Like every (non-embedded) Linux system I’ve used, the Raspberry Pi running Raspbian can use the compose key method for entering extra characters. I’m annoyed, though, that almost every setup tutorial either says to disable it, or doesn’t explain what it’s for. Let me fix that for you …<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Setup<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Run raspi-config<\/p>\n\n\n\n

sudo raspi-config<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
and go to the configure_keyboard<\/strong><\/del> \u201c4 Internationalisation Options\u201d \u2192 \u201cI3 Change Keyboard Layout\u201d section. Your keyboard\u2019s probably mostly set up the way you want it, so hit the Tab key and select <Ok><\/strong> until you get to the Compose key section:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"raspi-config:<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Choose whatever is convenient. The combined keyboard and trackpad I use (a SolidTek KB-3910<\/a>) with my Raspberry Pi has a couple of \u201cWindows\u00ae Logo\u201d\u009d keys, and the one on the right works for me. Keep the rest of the keyboard options the same, and exit raspi-config. After the message<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reloading keymap. This may take a short while\n[ ok<\/span> ] Setting preliminary keymap...done.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
appears, you now have a working Compose key.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the Compose key<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
raspi-config hints (\u2018On the text console the Compose key does not work in Unicode mode \u2026<\/em>\u2019) that Compose might not work everywhere with every piece of software. I’ve tested it across quite a few pieces of software \u2014 both on the text console and under LXDE \u2014 and support seems to be almost<\/em> universal. The only differences I can find are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n