ASCII or Unicode? (was best text editor for programming Python on a Mac)

[Marko Rauhamaa]

Larry Hudson <orgnut at yahoo.com>:
> It sounds like you are almost, but not quite, describing the Linux
> Compose key.

I have used Linux since the 1990's but don't know anything about "the
Linux Compose key." (On the other hand, I have always specified my
preferred keyboard layout with .Xmodmap.)

> These are all pretty easy to remember.
> German umlauts a" o" u" give ä ö ü  (or use uppercase)
> Spanish eña (spelling?) and punctuations:  n~ ?? !!  -->  ñ ¿ ¡
> French accents:  e' e` e^ c,  -->  é è ê ç
> Money:  c= l- y- c/  -->  € £ ¥ ¢
> Math:  =/ -: +- xx <= >=  -->  ≠ ÷ ± × ≤ ≥
> Superscripts:  ^0 ^1 ^2 ^3  -->  ⁰ ¹ ² ³
> Simple fractions:  12 13 ... 78  -->  ½ ⅓ ... ⅞
> Here's a cute one:  CCCP  -->  ☭  (hammer & sickle)
> And like your first examples:  oo mu ss  -->  ° µ ß

Trouble is, nobody's going to guess or memorize any of that stuff. The
Chinese face analogous typing issues. They must have come up with
productive solutions since demonstrably they can type quite fast.


Marko