it was much easier to type international characters when i was using slackware... i was typing things in english, french and russian. but now with zenwalk i don't seem to find any easy way to type international characters unless i change the keyboard layout.

so for example if i need to type in "cuillère".. is there any easier way to type "è" than by opening up the special character map program and cutting and pasting the characters i want?

maybe an easier way to change between keyboard layouts - which would be quite handy for me, changing between EN, RU and FR.

or some shortcut keys to make it easier to type è é à ç and so on...!

or some package that would allow me to do all that.

or maybe there isn't one to do all that job at all...
oh and if i could type Japanese in Zenwalk... that would be the bestest day of my life. haha but yeah i think that's too much to ask at the moment.

cheers guys!!

hi,
this is not the only solution, but you can use :
setxkbmap us
to change keyboardmap (change us with :fr, ru, .... as needed)
and (maybe, ... not checked): http://support.zenwalk.org/index.php/topic,899.0.html (this is for chinese but might be helpful for japanese)

thanks guth! that's helpful! i am going to try out the thing on this link also: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=213960. i took a brief look at the keyboard mapping and how these keys are assigned. i am using the UK keyboard... and i found that they really don't maximise the usage of their keys. i prefer the layouts for french keyboards. anyway, thanks.

i've just managed to change the layout for my keyboard by changing "gb" (coz i am using the uk key board layout) in /etc/X11/xkb/symbols/pc directory.

so now i changed the file to

xkb_symbols "basic" {

// Describes the differences between a very simple en_US
// keyboard and a very simple U.K. keyboard layout defined by
// the SVR4 European Language Supplement and sometimes also
// known as the IBM 166 layout.

include "pc/latin"

name[Group1]="United Kingdom";

key <AE02> { [ 2, quotedbl, ccedilla, Ccedilla ] };
key <AE03> { [ 3, sterling, dead_breve, sterling ] };
key <AE04> { [ 4, dollar, EuroSign, dead_diaeresis ] };
key <AE06> { [ 6, circumflex, dead_circumflex, dead_caron ] };

key <AC11> { [apostrophe, at, dead_grave, dead_caron] };
key <TLDE> { [ grave, notsign, dead_acute, bar ] };

key <BKSL> { [numbersign, asciitilde, dead_tilde, dead_ogonek ] };
key <LSGT> { [ backslash, brokenbar, exclamdown, brokenbar ] };

include "level3(ralt_switch)"
};

then restart the computer.

so now when i type AltRight+~ then n gives ñ, AltRight+2 gives ç and so on... that dead-key thing is very useful so now i can type with acute, grave and even with ogonek (if i ever want to type something in Polish! haha)

and for getting the russian keyboard layout, i just have to change the keyboard layout manually at the moment. but that's ok...

i am happy! hurray!