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Just a question: is there in KDE a way to enter a special character in the Windoze "alt + ASCII-code" style? I'm an average desktop user recently moved to Linux and I don't understand a thing about defining tables, modifier keys or keyboard layouts, and doing copy-paste is annoying. My problem isn't entering áéíóú¿¡çñ (I've a Spanish keyboard), but typographic-like high ASCII/ANSI characters, like alt+0145, 0146, 0147, 0148, 0171, 0187...

I've read in some forums that Gn*m* has something like what I need, but I don't want to use anything than KDE (I've got 3.2 on Mdk 10.1).

PLEASE, give a peasant-English answer!

As I know not all forum entries are equally updated in search engines, and that not all engines point to the same links, here's (again) what I posted here and here as conlussions of my desperate search; I hope to write in average-destop-user languaje (‘peasant English’).

...

The point is that there is a way to enter special characters in KDE as in Windoze style (alt+ascii) or Crapintosh style (mod+(mod)+key), but none is globally aplicable, and I've not found someone who has officialy documented it in www.kde.org, nor given a tool to standarize the imput method for those "high ASCII" or "Unicode extended" characters for any and all applications run in a KDE session.

Choices are:

1. In pure X or GTK apps (it is, not KDE but generic graphic environment or Gn*m* oriented), you can use control+shift+unicode hexadecimal number (it's quite like Windoze alt+ascii, but with more keystrokes).
2. In all other situations (except real text terminal mode, where an average desktop user never goes, and anything can do is useless), use altgr+(shift)+key, like in Crapintosh... Even within Wine... ¡Even in KDE apps...! (ߢµ come up with altgr+s, c, m; §©º come with altgr+shift+s, c, m). Unless you have a LatAm Spanish keyboard like mine, and need round (‘’) or squared (‹›) sigle quotation marks (I had to enter them here with c+s+u: control+shift+2018, 2019, 2039 and203A), among other exotic typographic eye candies. Get an on-screen keyboard app to see what characters you can introduce with which key bindings (use it as Crapintosh's Keys or KeyCaps)... Maybe GOK is in your system, but it's ugly, slow and messy (well, is GTK...).
3. If your app doesn't support any of both methods, or if your character doesn't appear in your system's key bindings (ie, again, ‘’‹›), copy-paste from a character map chooser app (well, can happen that instead of ‘’ you get "U\2018U\2019"), or from another app that supports c+s+unicode.
4. If you know how and don't get messed with this, do what everybody (like good-ol Jacek here) says in the forums: find a keyboard layout that shows your special characters with use of key bindings, activate it along with your default, and change of layout every five to 20 keystrokes.
5. If you have become a KDE guru (in which case you're not reading this), modify and setup your mod keys and teach your humble average-desktop-user colleages how to use them to bring to life their high or extended characters.

Good luck!