How to enter german Umlaute and other special characters on US keyboards
Compose Key
The "Compose Key is a configurable special key in the X11 keyboard input system. On our linux clients the "Compose Key" is configured on the "Right Windows Key" on the keyboard.
If you press and release the compose key you can now enter special combinations of existing characters on the keyboard to compose special characters. Here is a table of the most commonly used combinations:
key 1 |
key 2 |
result |
||
" |
a |
ä |
||
" |
A |
Ä |
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^ |
a |
â |
||
´ |
e |
é |
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- |
: |
÷ |
||
1 |
2 |
½ |
||
= |
c |
€ |
||
- |
L |
£ |
||
o |
c |
© |
||
/ |
O |
Ø |
||
You can find a complete list at: http://fsymbols.com/keyboard/linux/compose
Entering characters with the unicode code
After pressing <CTRL><SHIFT>u simultaneously you can enter characters with their unicode code, p.e. the code 2655 gives the character ♥.
For a unicode table see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unicode_characters
Switching keyboard layout
If you are able to use other keyboard layouts than US blindly you can also switch the keyboard to another layout ( swiss german, ...).
In all modern linux desktops (Gnome, KDE, Xfce, ..) the keyboard layout can be configured by the user in the Settings/Preferences menu.