Talk:Dead key

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I reverted this edit [1]:

Dead keys, made popular by the Sun Compose key, are an intuitive way to type letters, diacritics, and other symbols not normally on a given keyboard or keyboard layout. Use of a dead mimics type accents on a mechanical typewriter -- by typing one letter, backspacing, and then typing an accent in the same spot. Some examples:
Compose + e + ' yields: é
Compose + D + - yields: Ð
Compose + L + ­- yields: £

This is a different method for inputting accented characters which works quite opposite to dead keys. --Pjacobi 10:35, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

ACK Compose and Dead Key are different methods of input and thus deserve distinct articles.--Hhielscher 11:50, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Relation to combining character

This article should avoid talking too much about combining characters, which are a way of constructing complex glyphs from multiple characters. Dead keys, on the other hand, are just one technique of accessing such complex glyphs. A-giau 03:48, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AltGr using X-Windows

"In many text processing programs, dead keys are typed using the Ctrl key with the punctuation mark that looks most like the accent. In the X Window System, the AltGr key has this function." AFAIK AltGr is Level-3-Shift under X. Can someone give an example what is meant with the above? Does it need a special keyboard/xkb layout?--Hhielscher 09:54, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Example not working on my computer

The example given of the '~' over a 'p' does not show up on my computer, just shows as '~p'. Using Firefox latest patch, WinXP Pro SP2 if that makes any difference. Not that you'd ever need to combine thsoe 2 characters, just the article claims you can, and then proceeds to demonstrate, and it doesn't really work. Lurlock 23:44, 19 March 2007 (UTC)