
Typing the λ (lambda) character with the compose key on Xorg - ciderpunx
http://charlieharvey.org.uk/page/type_lambda_charcter_with_compose_on_xwindows_on_debian
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thyrsus
My Google-foo is usually pretty good, because I usually understand the
conceptual framework within which I'm looking for a detail. This is not the
case with the X11 system. The last reasonable overview I'm familiar with is
the O'Reilly X System Administrators Guide ( [http://www.amazon.com/Windows-
System-Administrators-Definiti...](http://www.amazon.com/Windows-System-
Administrators-Definitive-Guides/dp/0937175838) ) from 1992 (volumes 1-7 are
mostly about protocol details, primitives and libraries). Things introduced
since then are a jumble to me.

What should I read for an update? I'm mostly in the Red Hat/Fedora ecosystem,
which includes a multitude of upper layers.

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AngryParsley
After reading the post, I was curious how to do the same thing on OS X.

I knew there was a menu for special characters built into all text inputs, so
I searched help for "characters." The first result was Edit->Special
Characters, which showed a shortcut of ⌘+⎇+T. I searched the special
characters for "lamda" and selected the first result. After that, I figured
out how to easily type λ often. You can add a string substitution in System
Prefs -> Language & Text -> Text.

No googling. No config files. No restarting X. ♥ My biggest issue was finding
the ⌘ symbol, which is classified as "place of interest sign" in the technical
symbols category.

~~~
cmsj
There are also ways to convert an X11 compose configuration into Cocoa
keyboard shortcuts. Google around. it's not a ton of fun, but it's very doable
:)

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thristian
For me, changing the GTK+ input method was as easy as right-clicking in any
GTK+ dialog box and picking "Input Methods" → "System (Simple)", rather than
having to mess with /etc/environment. That setting seems to have stuck even
through reboots.

I also highly recommend you look through the standard XCompose file, since
there's a lot of handy symbols—like <Compose><hyphen><hyphen><hyphen> for an
em-dash, <Compose><hyphen><greater-than> for an arrow, or
<Compose><C><C><C><P> for ☭.

~~~
p4bl0
I guess it depends on your setup but for me “export GTK_IM_MODULE=xim” is just
a line in my ~/.xinitrc file.

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p4bl0
I use the compose key extensively and I think that one of the best .XCompose
file out there is the one of kragen [1]. It has a _lot_ of bindings and they
are easy to remember. λ is <Multi_key> <asterisk> <l> (actually all greek
letters are on <Multi_key> <asterisk> [letter]).

[1] <https://github.com/kragen/xcompose/blob/master/dotXCompose>

