RetroCraft / xcompose

Lots and lots of xcompose things.

All files in this distribution use UTF‐8 pointlessly. Read them in a font with good Unicode coverage — say, DejaVu Sans Mono or GNU unifont (xfonts-unifont).

Introduction

Unicode has lots of cool characters. I mean lots and lots of cool characters. Enough characters to annoy all your friends with useless charactery. Your keyboard doesn’t have nearly enough keys to input all them.

In X — the GUI system used in Linux, BSD, Solaris &c. — there are a number of different ways to input these extra characters. Some are suitable for occasional use: search for the character online or in a character map program by name, then copy and paste it or enter its number or name. Some are suitable for frequent use: use a “3rd Level Shift” (typically AltGr), dead keys, or input methods. XCompose is an intermediate solution: each character is typed using a mnemonic combination of a few keystrokes. It’s not fast enough to use in every word, but it’s fairly easy to remember (or rediscover) for characters you might use once a day or once a fortnight, and much less annoying than having to search online that often.

Most Compose sequences begin with the Compose key, also known as Multi_key (typically assigned to the Windows Menu key or equivalent). Dead keys (where you press an accent key, then a letter, and an accented letter is typed) are implemented with Compose too. X comes with many builtin mappings described in /usr/share/X11/locale/*/Compose, and you can add your own in ~/.XCompose. But what to add, and how?

Pointless‐XCompose provides a Compose file with thousands of extra Compose mappings, compatible with the standard X US English Compose file. (I intend to make it compatible with all standard Compose files.)

What’s included

I also included a few other potentially interesting Compose‐related stuff, such as a selection of standard X mappings, a script to generate deadkey variants of Compose files, &c.

• README.md: This.
• src/*.xcompose: All the abbreviations
• bin/build.py: Make an xcompose-usable file
• doc/mnemonics.md: Abbreviation starts
• doc/license.txt: “Public domain.”

Installation

1. Copy or git-clone this directory.

2. Run bin/build.py to create an xcompose file.

3. Symlink xcompose to ~/.XCompose:

   ln -s /path/to/pointless-xcompose/xcompose ~/.XCompose

4. Check your Compose key setup: the command

   setxkbmap -print

   should mention “compose” in a line starting xkb_symbols, for example:

   xkb_symbols { include "pc+us(altgr-intl)+gb:2+us:3+inet(evdev)+altwin(swap_alt_win)+level3(rwin_switch)+capslock(ctrl_modifier)+compose(ralt)" };

   (near the end of the line; here it says Compose is the right Alt key). If no Compose key is set up, you’ll need to configure one. Sadly, this works differently in different desktops, so I can’t give standard instructions.

   Once you have a Compose key configured, try it out: type “Compose + -” (i.e., the Compose key, then the plus key, then the minus key) and you should get “±”.

5. Restart your apps (and perhaps X the first time) — XCompose settings only apply for new windows.

6. In GNOME (or GTK applications, if you know what that means), XCompose configuration unfortunately won’t work by default; GTK defines its own static, compile‐time, non-configurable compose mechanism which overrides X.

   A workaround is to use the uim input method. Sadly, how to install and configure it varies from system to system. The package is probably called uim. On Debian or Ubuntu, use im-config; on Fedora or RedHat, use ImChooser.

Usage

Read the included xcompose files to see what’s included. The system’s mappings are in /usr/share/X11/locale/$LANG/Compose (if there’s no such directory for your locale, look in /usr/share/X11/locale/locale.dir; for example my locale, en_GB.UTF-8 is listed there under en_US.UTF-8):

en_US.UTF-8/XLC_LOCALE en_GB.UTF-8

Adding your own Compose sequences

One Compose sequence cannot be a prefix of another. Suppose you have this sequence:

• Compose . . = → ·
• Compose . . . = → …

Now when you type «Compose . .», X won’t print anything because it’s waiting for «Compose . . .» (IMHO it should print · and then change it to … should you type another period, but I digress). That means you probably don’t want to make a Compose shortcut for U2A94 GREATER-THAN ABOVE SLANTED EQUAL ABOVE LESS-THAN ABOVE SLANTED EQUAL (⪔).

All the mappings here have been compared against X.org 1.6.2’s en_US Compose file for conflicts. Several of my entries are present in X’s Compose as another sequence, but I prefer one that’s more mnemonic. The few entries that replace X mappings are marked “INTENTIONAL CONFLICT”.

Conventions:

• Follow patterns in system Compose files. For example:

• Termination convention (copied from X):

  • A repeated character: Compose v v → ✓
  • Where that would conflict, a period:
    • Compose - . → − (true hypen)
    • Compose - - . → – (en‐bar)
    • Compose - - - → — (em‐bar) (Side note: the difference between the above three characters is small in monospaced fonts, but large in proportionals).

• Where we conflict with the system files, do so only for characters that have multiple definitions, and where multiple sequences follow the same pattern, only conflict with one pattern, so that users can use the remaining pattern(s) without being bothered with exceptions.

• Avoid spelling out names (rather, use an input method that allows spelling out).