Hi; After a discussion on how to bind a unicode glyph or accented character to a shortcut key or key combination of my own choosing one of the responders suggested I wait until the sharp folks figure out how to solve it. I am resending my comments to the Fedoara List because this seems to be where all the sharp folks hang out. My response was: "Here is what I would like to see the sharp folks do to solve this. 1) Starting at the lowest level of the display hierarchy, create a shell command that is equivalent to <Ctrl><Shft>+U,+ unicode#. Lets call the command 'ucode' with the following syntax: ucode [option] unicode# (in hex, oct or decimal). E.G. ]$ ucode 2714 would return the ✔ on stdout. It should work with 'echo' so that it can be used in shell scripts along with other characters to produce a string. Options are not necessary, but programmers seem to like to complexify things. So lets add options for font and point size changes or whatever else. 2) Moving up a level, the 'ucode #' command could be used to Bind a unicode output to a key or modified key in xkeymap or readline etc. 3) Up another level to the desktop, the 'ucode #' command could be recognized by Gnome, KDE or whatever so that a particular glyph or accented character could be bound to a global key. I use Gnome with metacity, but I used to use KDE a couple of years ago so I am pretty sure KDE has the same kind of key binding facility. In gnome-configuration-editor under applications metacity there is a "keybinding_commands" process which has "command_1, command_2, etc." where the user can enter a specific command. I would like to enter command_3 <=> ucode 2714. Then go to the metacity "global_keybindings" process and add <Super_L>y to command_3. Voila. 4) Up to the application level. All my applications run under Gnome e.g. OOo, Evolution, gTerminal, gedit, etc. They should now recognize <Super_l> y as a checkmark. I acknowledge that it is possible for a duplicate shortcut to be created by accident. A warning message should take care of that, and it is no more of a problem than already exists when created new shortcuts in any application. This process gives each user the freedom to create a glyph and/or accented character keystroke shortcut that persists and is meaningful to the user rather than being stuck with the choice of the original keyboard layout designer and shouldn't be difficult to implement. In my view the problem has always been to get a command that replicates keystrokes without having to climb the learning curve of 'expect' and attaching a full blown script." I don't know if this is a practical solution; I am not a programmer and have been using Linux/OOo for only 2½ years. So read the above suggestion as directions to where I want to go, not particularly as a suggestion of how to get there. Before making a request for an enhancement; is this amateur stuff or has it been suggested before or is there some major impediment that I am not aware of? I have noticed, on the 3 or 4 mailing lists I belong to, more and more questions on how to use unicode effectively both from the command line and in applications. I know as time passes, I find more uses for unicode components and memorizing several unicode codes and/or using cheat sheets seems to fall short of finishing the job of converting the world from ASCII to unicode. -- Regards Bill
