Current File : //usr/share/help/C/gnome-help/tips-specialchars.page
<page xmlns="http://projectmallard.org/1.0/"
xmlns:its="http://www.w3.org/2005/11/its"
type="topic" style="task" version="1.0 if/1.0"
id="tips-specialchars">
<info>
<link type="guide" xref="tips"/>
<link type="seealso" xref="keyboard-layouts"/>
<revision pkgversion="3.8.2" version="0.3" date="2013-05-18" status="review"/>
<revision pkgversion="3.10" date="2013-11-01" status="review"/>
<revision pkgversion="3.26" date="2017-11-27" status="review"/>
<revision version="gnome:40" date="2021-03-02" status="review"/>
<credit type="author">
<name>Shaun McCance</name>
<email>shaunm@gnome.org</email>
</credit>
<credit type="editor">
<name>Michael Hill</name>
<email>mdhillca@gmail.com</email>
</credit>
<credit type="editor">
<name>Ekaterina Gerasimova</name>
<email>kittykat3756@gmail.com</email>
</credit>
<credit type="editor">
<name>Andre Klapper</name>
<email>ak-47@gmx.net</email>
</credit>
<include href="legal.xml" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"/>
<desc>Type characters not found on your keyboard, including foreign alphabets, mathematical symbols, emoji, and dingbats.</desc>
</info>
<title>Enter special characters</title>
<p>You can enter and view thousands of characters from most of the world’s
writing systems, even those not found on your keyboard. This page lists
some different ways you can enter special characters.</p>
<links type="section">
<title>Methods to enter characters</title>
</links>
<section id="characters">
<title>Characters</title>
<p>The character map application allows you to find and insert unusual
characters, including emoji, by browsing character categories or searching
for keywords.</p>
<p>You can launch <app>Characters</app> from the Activities overview.</p>
</section>
<section id="emoji">
<title>Emoji</title>
<steps>
<title>Insert emoji</title>
<item>
<p>Press <keyseq><key>Ctrl</key><key>;</key></keyseq>.</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Browse the categories at the bottom of the dialog or start typing a
description in the search field.</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Select an emoji to insert.</p>
</item>
</steps>
</section>
<section id="compose">
<title>Compose key</title>
<p>A compose key is a special key that allows you to press multiple keys
in a row to get a special character. For example, to type the accented
letter <em>é</em>, you can press <key>compose</key> then <key>'</key>
then <key>e</key>.</p>
<p>Keyboards don’t have specific compose keys. Instead, you can define
one of the existing keys on your keyboard as a compose key.</p>
<steps>
<title>Define a compose key</title>
<item>
<p>Open the <gui xref="shell-introduction#activities">Activities</gui>
overview and start typing <gui>Settings</gui>.</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Click on <gui>Settings</gui>.</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Click <gui>Keyboard</gui> in the sidebar to open the panel.</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>In the <gui>Type Special Characters</gui> section, click <gui>Compose Key</gui>.</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Turn the switch on for the <gui>Compose Key</gui>.</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Tick the checkbox of the key that you want to set as the Compose
key.</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Close the dialog.</p>
</item>
</steps>
<p>You can type many common characters using the compose key, for
example:</p>
<list>
<item><p>Press <key>compose</key> then <key>'</key> then a letter to
place an acute accent over that letter, such as <em>é</em>.</p></item>
<item><p>Press <key>compose</key> then <key>`</key> (back tick) then a
letter to place a grave accent over that letter, such as
<em>è</em>.</p></item>
<item><p>Press <key>compose</key> then <key>"</key> then a letter to
place an umlaut over that letter, such as <em>ë</em>.</p></item>
<item><p>Press <key>compose</key> then <key>-</key> then a letter to
place a macron over that letter, such as <em>ē</em>.</p></item>
</list>
<p>For more compose key sequences, see <link
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compose_key#Common_compose_combinations">the
compose key page on Wikipedia</link>.</p>
</section>
<section id="ctrlshiftu">
<title>Code points</title>
<p>You can enter any Unicode character using only your keyboard with the
numeric code point of the character. Every character is identified by a
four-character code point. To find the code point for a character, look it up
in the <app>Characters</app> application. The code point is the four characters
after <gui>U+</gui>.</p>
<p>To enter a character by its code point, press
<keyseq><key>Ctrl</key><key>Shift</key><key>U</key></keyseq>, then type the
four-character code and press <key>Space</key> or <key>Enter</key>. If you often
use characters that you can’t easily access with other methods, you might find
it useful to memorize the code point for those characters so you can enter
them quickly.</p>
</section>
<section id="layout">
<title>Keyboard layouts</title>
<p>You can make your keyboard behave like the keyboard for another language,
regardless of the letters printed on the keys. You can even easily switch
between different keyboard layouts using an icon in the top bar. To learn
how, see <link xref="keyboard-layouts"/>.</p>
</section>
<section id="im">
<title>Input methods</title>
<p>An Input Method expands the previous methods by allowing to enter
characters not only with keyboard but also any input devices. For instance
you could enter characters with a mouse using a gesture method, or enter
Japanese characters using a Latin keyboard.</p>
<p>To choose an input method, right-click over a text widget, and in the menu
<gui>Input Method</gui>, choose an input method you want to use. There is no
default input method provided, so refer to the input methods documentation to
see how to use them.</p>
</section>
</page>
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