Re: [vile] Question on input of UTF8 char's in programs.

[Brendan O'Dea]

On 9 September 2014 22:39, Paul Fox <address@hidden> wrote:
> how does one access the characters defined using the "dead_..."
> strokes, like the greek letter pi (π)?  i entered it there using
> ^Vu03C0, but i should be able to do something more mnemonic, according
> to this:
>   <dead_greek> <p>            : "π"   U03C0    # GREEK SMALL LETTER PI

"Dead" keys are a general term to describe a key which doesn't produce
anything when struck, but affects the following key (as opposed to
modifiers like Control which are held when pressing another key).

There are some keymaps where various quote characters become dead
keys: handy if you're writing in a language with lots of accents: 'e
produces é for example; fairly annoying when writing code, since to
get a quote you need to press it twice.

In this case, "dead_greek" is a symbol which needs to be mapped to a
key using a standard keymap, creating your own keymap or with xmodmap.
AFAICT, the only keymap with a default mapping for that is an oddball
French BÉPO layout.

  xmodmap -e 'keycode 108 = dead_greek dead_iota'

Will make the right Alt key dead_greek, and when shifted dead_iota.

--bod