What's the best way to type special characters without the Compose key?

Ask Fedora
1

I often type in languages that use special characters like à, á, ç, and ñ, but my keyboard has a US layout so it doesn’t have these special characters built-in. I know about the Compose key (and it’s what I’m using currently), but this adds an extra key press that makes writing really clunky, since these special characters can easily appear once every three words.

On Windows I use AutoHotKey to program replacements: `a produces à, etc. Basically like the Compose key but without the extra key press. The only similar program I’ve found on Linux is Espanso, but it has a delay between typing the string and replacing, which makes it useless for this purpose as I need to be able to type continuously without waiting for it to trigger. The international US layout doesn’t work either (it doesn’t seem to have à, for example).

So, basically, is there a way I can type “à” (and any other special characters) in two key presses rather than three? Any help will be appreciated.

I use Fedora Workstation, GNOME desktop. Installed a few days ago, so I’m on the latest version.

2

I don’t know if you have tried the US-English international with dead keys layout. With that you can type 'a and get á for xample. The down side is that you have to type the dead key followed by space to get the normal quote character.

3

Huh, that’s easier than I expected. I can get used to needing a space after the apostrophe. I had seen talk about this but I had assumed it wouldn’t include Ç or · (for the l·l combination present in Catalan), but it looks like it does. Thank you, this will do until I buy a keyboard with the layout I need.

4

You can try ibus-typing-booster or ibus-m17n, which provides “t-latn-pre” engine in “Other” language with ibus-setup utility.