Geeky Nuggets

Spanish characters on Qwerty keyboard for Ubuntu 10.10

January 14, 2011 | 1 Minute Read

Typing spanish characters on a standard QWERTY (or other) keyboard is near impossible. I have used the Character Palette panel applet to do so, but this method requires clicking on the letter you want, and then paste it where you want it. To much work for my tastes. Yes I’m lazy. I’m a programmer.

So, an easier is using the compose key. This allows me to type that key and a single apostrophe followed by the letter e for example, and get a �. I mapped the compose key to the left Win key, so the sequience is LWin - ' > e which writes é

To choose the compose key, open Preferences > Keyboard, Layouts tab and click on Options. Open the Compose key position submenu, and choose whichever one you like best. I think the Win key is a good choice as it’s not used for anything much… Except remind us of our freedom…

Keyboard Layout Options

And yay! Writing Spanish is cool again!