[LBo] Umlauts, Accents, ...

[Stefan Waidele]

Somebody wrote offlist:
> HI Stefan,
> 
> If you use the vi text editor to write German, how do you enter the vowels 
> with umlauts?  I know it can be done with an "e" after the letter, but can it 
> be done with two dots above the letter?

On german keyboards, we have keys for the umlauts. French keyboards also 
do have keys for combinations like é and the like.

The problem is to do the letters that are NOT on the keyboard when 
typing in a foreign language.

X11 has the compose-key for that. Depending on you configuration, it 
might be the right ctrl-key.

It works like this:
Press <compose>, then the accent, then the letter.
<compose> ´ e gives é
<compose> , c gives ç
<compose> " o gives ö
<compose> / o gives ø
<compose> ~ a gives ã

and so on.

Of course, this works only if you run vi from within X11,

Stefan