Writing accents with Suse
 

Hi!
I' m using Suse Enterprise Desktop 11 on a notebook HP 655. When I try to write accents on letters, I get the accents near the letters like this "'e" or "`e" instead having "é" or "è". I guess that I should change something in the control center->Keyboard->Layout. But I don't know what.

Thank you for any help.

Could you please post the output ofAre you using X-window? and if yes, which Windowmanager? With KDE you can look into "System Settings" -> Keyboard-settings and also in the regional settings.

Markus

I use GNOME. As Keyboard layout, I use Germany eliminate dead keys.

Xpucto

Well, you should not use "eliminate dead keys", because this puts the ´ or ` directly onto the screen whereas "dead keys" means that the character is printed after the next button is pressed (e in your case). Try the simple german layout.

The $LANG should not be the problem.

Just tested here, with you can check if it works (temporarily because this will be lost after rebooting). I'm no expert for Suse and Gnome as well, I don't therefore know if you have to change the settings for X or for Gnome.

Markus

Thank you for your answer! I did choose "Germany" (or "Germany dead acute grave", both work) and it worked. Only the "^" did not work with some program. Then I unchecked the option "Separate layout for each window" and it worked everywhere. Here the explanation about the "separate layout" option:
Thanks again.

Xpucto

Your best bet is to set a Compose key — the Windows Menu is a good choice. Then you can use sequences (pressed separately) like
Comp + apostrophe + "a" for "á"
Comp + grave + "e" for "è"
Comp + "^" + "o" for "ô"

Dead keys are a pain!

Thank you for the tip but how do I do this?

I also have the problem that every time I restart Linux, the "Germany eliminate dead keys" are automatically put back in the layout lists and then the accents don't work anymore until I delete that "Germany eliminate dead keys" again from the list. At the next new start of Linux this layout is back again...

Have a look at this:
http://userbase.kde.org/Tutorials/ComposeKey

How did you change the settings? if you want to have it permanently you should edit the appropriate file in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/??-keyboard-layout or (when you login to your computer with a display manager (gdm I suppose) edit your ~/.xprofile and insert the settings there.

Markus

I looked at the information about persistent configuration but couldn't find any file like "/etc/X11/xinit/xinput.d/default"... probably because I use GNOME though...

I also couldn't find any or any .xprofile file.

I made the changes using Control Center->Keyboard->Layout.

You can create a file .xprofile in your homedirectory and put the settings you do with setxkbmap there in. the file .xprofile should be sourced when you login. But it's possible that some distributions handle these things different.

Markus

Then you did it right! You might like to mark your original post as solved.

Sorry I didn't notice you were using Gnome. There's almost always a configuration tool in the menu with a desktop like KDE or Gnome, and it's best to use them rather than messing around in files as recommended by old-school users (who have the advantage of understanding them!)

Well, that's actually the problem I have described: I've used Control Center->Keyboard->Layout but every time I restart the computer I have the old configuration back again and every time I have to delete the "Germany Eliminate Dead Keys" layout. So it is no solved...

My description refers to people who have no root-access to their computer and have therefore to do the settings on user-level. It should work for most distributions (but it is correct what DavidMcCann wrote, prefer the tools of your distribution if they work).

Markus

Well, as I said : my tool doesn't work since the result vanishes every time I restart the computer. I haven't understood what I should exactly put in my xprofile file.

You can put any command into your .xprofile which can be executed on the commandline.
For example the setxkbmap commands, just try it out.

Note that the name of the file is .xprofile

Markus

I finally reinstalled linux and choosed right at the beginning the right option.