compose

Compose is also a name of the key that's commonly found on many terminal keyboards.

What it does is roughly same everywhere: When you press Compose, and then two other keys, something similiar to combination of these two glyphs appear on the screen.

For example, Compose-/-O will give Ø, Compose-"-O will give Ö and Compose-O-C will give ©.

In X Windowing System this key is better known as MultiKey, and you can use xmodmap to map it to any key. Also, on my case at least, telling XFree86 that I have a 105-key Finnish keyboard turned right Windows key automagically into MultiKey.

For a long time, I lived in ignorance of the compose key. When I lived in my cloistered little world as a RISC OS user, I was quite happy with things; we had the ISO-8859-1 character set, and nifty Alt-key combinations to get the interesting characters when they were necessary, although half the time I'd memorise the character code and enter that instead.

Then I was forced to use DOS at school. My umlauts and acutes turned into big nasty graphics blobs. And I suddenly got nervous of any character that needed more than the strict ASCII 7-bits. So when I was exposed to UNIX for the first time, I stayed well clear of that compose key.

Now, things seem to have got better, what with HTML and specified language encodings, so once again, it seems safe to reach for the multiple-key combinations. Particularly here on E2, where the character set is strictly defined as ISO 8859 (the HTTP headers say so. As it is written, so shall it be).

These character pairs given here are as defined in the XFree86 mappings for ISO-8859-1, which is the set used in most European countries, and America, Australia etc. There shouldn't be much variation between systems. Generally there's more than one way to get the same character, and usually the character pairs can be entered either way round.

A point it's probably important to impress is that the compose key is used by pressing it and releasing before the other two characters. It is not like Shift or Ctrl, it's more like Esc.

Accents

Accents are pretty simple, and are composed of the character to be accented, and a fairly close approximation of the accent to be applied:

• acute (´) is obtained by using the apostrophe (') key.
• grave (`) is obtained from... well, the grave (`) key.
• cedilla (¸) is obtained from the comma (,) key.
• umlaut or diaeresis (¨) is obtained from the double quote (") key.
• circumflex (^) comes from the circumflex key, though this is also used for superscripts.
• tilde (~) can be obtained by using tilde (~) or dash (-)
• rings (°) come from the asterisk (*) symbol.

Not all combinations are available in ISO 8859; where the acute, grave, circumflex and umlaut are available for all vowels (and also umlaut and acutes on 'y'), the ring is only avaible for A (making the Angstrom symbol...), cedilla only on it's own or on 'c', and the tilde only has meaning on 'a', 'o' and 'n'. Upper and lower case are both available.

Examples (not that you need them, of course...)

• 'e (Compose ' e): é
• E` (Compose E `): È
• C, (Compose C ,): Ç
• *A (Compose * A): Å

Punctuation

• !!: ¡
• ??: ¿
• <<: «
• >>: »
• ^.: · (or ..)
• p!: ¶
• so: §
• (space space): non-breaking space
• --:

Currency, Numbers.

• xo: ¤
• /c: ¢ (also |c, c/ and c|, and in capital form)
• l-: £ (also capital L, reversed order, and l=)
• y=: ¥ (also capital, reversed etc.)
• ^1: ¹
• ^2: ²
• ^3: ³
• 14: ¼
• 12: ½
• 34: ¾

Also, ISO-8859-15 defines the Euro currency symbol, obtained by C=.

Miscellaneous

• co: ©
• a_: ª
• o_: º
• o^: ô
• +-: ±
• /u: µ
• ||: ¦
• -,: ¬
• RO: ®
• ^-: ¯ (also __)
• :-: ÷
• xx: ×
• '': ´
• ,,: ¸
• "": ¨
• AE: Æ
• ae: æ
• D-: Ð
• d-: ð
• ss: ß
• TH: Þ
• th: þ

Com*pose" (?), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Composed (?); p. pr. & vb. n. Composing.] [F. composer; com- + poser to place. The sense is that of L. componere, but the prigin is different. See Pose, v. t.]

1.

To form by putting together two or more things or parts; to put together; to make up; to fashion.

Zeal ought to be composed of the hidhest degrees of all pious affection. Bp. Sprat.

2.

To form the substance of, or part of the substance of; to constitute.

Their borrowed gold composed The calf in Oreb. Milton.

A few useful things . . . compose their intellectual possessions. I. Watts.

3.

To construct by mental labor; to design and execute, or put together, in a manner involving the adaptation of forms of expression to ideas, or to the laws of harmony or proportion; as, to compose a sentence, a sermon, a symphony, or a picture.

Let me compose Something in verse as well as prose. Pope.

The genius that composed such works as the "Standard" and "Last Supper". B. R. Haydon.

4.

To dispose in proper form; to reduce to order; to put in proper state or condition; to adjust; to regulate.

In a peaceful grave my corpse compose. Dryden.

How in safety best we may Compose our present evils. Milton.

5.

To free from agitation or disturbance; to tranquilize; to soothe; to calm; to quiet.

Compose thy mind; Nor frauds are here contrived, nor force designed. Dryden.

6. Print.

To arrange (types) in a composing stick in order for printing; to set (type).

© Webster 1913.

Com*pose", v. i.

To come to terms.

Shak.

© Webster 1913.