[Tutor] encoding question

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Sat, Jan 04, 2014 at 04:15:30PM -0800, Alex Kleider wrote:

> >py> 'Bogotá'.encode('utf-8')
> 
> I'm interested in knowing how you were able to enter the above line 
> (assuming you have a key board similar to mine.)

I'm running Linux, and I use the KDE or Gnome character selector, 
depending on which computer I'm using. They give you a graphical window 
showing a screenful of characters at a time, depending on which 
application I'm using you can search for characters by name or property, 
then copy them into the clipboard to paste them into another 
application.

I can also use the "compose" key. My keyboard doesn't have an actual key 
labelled compose, but my system is set to use the right-hand Windows key 
(between Alt and the menu key) as the compose key. (Why the left-hand 
Windows key isn't set to do the same thing is a mystery to me.) So if I 
type:

<Compose> 'a

I get á.

The problem with the compose key is that it's not terribly intuitive. 
Sure, a few of them are: <Compose> 1 2 gives ½ but how do I get π (pi)? 
<Compose> p doesn't work.



-- 
Steven