How to get special characters on keyboard input?

Question

I am taking a latin class, and I need to be able to type latin on my keyboard. Due to the fact that latin uses all the characters in english, it's been fine so far, but now I've run into a problem.

I need the characters ā, ē, ī, ō, and ū to be easily accessible via the keyboard (e.g. Alt+A to get ā, or something of the such).

How can I do this in Ubuntu?

If you have the standard "US International" layout you need to select the variant with "dead keys" and type the diacritic sign before the letter, the same way users with layouts typical of the modern Latin derived languages always have done. — , Aug 11 '17 at 15:25
@MichaelBay could you explain how to do that? I am using Cinnamon, so the settings are different from default. Can you do this in the terminal? — ComputerGuy, Aug 11 '17 at 21:26
You certainly can do it in terminal but I don't know the commands. And I don't know Cinnamon either... It should be in the same place where you can change or add keyboard layouts. — , Aug 11 '17 at 21:28
@MichaelBay I've discovered how to get the dead keys layout, but I can't find anything that let's you configure it. — ComputerGuy, Aug 11 '17 at 21:29
http://linuxblog.darkduck.com/2016/07/how-to-keyboard-layouts-cinnamon-2.html — , Aug 11 '17 at 21:30

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 12 '17 at 19:53

1

It looks like you need the dead_macron symbol. An example with the English (US, international with dead keys) keyboard layout:

Typing RightAlt+Shift+3 followed by U results in the ū character.

answered Aug 12 '17 at 19:53

Gunnar Hjalmarsson

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Thanks! Worked perfectly. Is there any way to make it shorter, like just RightAlt + u to get ū? – ComputerGuy Aug 12 '17 at 20:01
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@ComputerGuy: I'm not aware of any standard way, but it would require that you create a customized keyboard layout. – Gunnar Hjalmarsson Aug 12 '17 at 20:13

How to get special characters on keyboard input?

1 Answers1