Linux
Since 2009 it has been very easy to add key combinations for accented Esperanto letters to one's usual keyboard layout, at least in Gnome and KDE. No download is required. The keyboard layout options can be modified under System Preferences. The options to choose are "Adding Esperanto circumflexes (supersigno)" and the appropriate keyboard layout (Qwerty or Dvorak). A third level shift key is also required: under "Key to choose 3rd level", e.g. LeftWin.
In older systems it may be necessary to activate Unicode by setting the locale to a UTF-8 locale. There is a special eo_XX.UTF-8 locale available at Bertil Wennergren's home page, along with a thorough explanation of how one implements Unicode and the keyboard in Linux.
If the Linux system is recent, or kept updated, then the system is probably already working with Esperanto keys. For X11 and KDE, it's only necessary to switch to a keyboard layout that has Latin dead keys (for example, the "US International" keyboard), whenever the user wants to write in Esperanto. Some keyboards with dead keys are:
- In the US International keyboard, the dead circumflex is over the "6" key ("shift-6") and the dead breve is hidden over the "9" key ("altgr-shift-9").
- In the Brazilian ABNT2 keyboard, the dead circumflex has its own key together with dead tilde ("shift-~"), near the "Enter" key. The dead breve is hidden over the backslash ("altgr-shift-\") key.
- In the Portuguese keyboard, the dead tilde key, near the left shift key, has both the dead circumflex and the dead breve.
| Keys / Layout | US International | Brazilian ABNT2 | Portuguese |
|---|---|---|---|
| ĉ | shift-6 c | shift-~ c | shift-~ c |
| Ĉ | shift-6 shift-c | shift-~ shift-c | shift-~ shift-c |
| ĝ | shift-6 g | shift-~ g | shift-~ g |
| Ĝ | shift-6 shift-g | shift-~ shift-g | shift-~ shift-g |
| ĥ | shift-6 h | shift-~ h | shift-~ h |
| Ĥ | shift-6 shift-h | shift-~ shift-h | shift-~ shift-h |
| ĵ | shift-6 j | shift-~ j | shift-~ j |
| Ĵ | shift-6 shift-j | shift-~ shift-j | shift-~ shift-j |
| ŝ | shift-6 s | shift-~ s | shift-~ s |
| Ŝ | shift-6 shift-s | shift-~ shift-s | shift-~ shift-s |
| ŭ | altgr-shift-9 u | altgr-shift-\ u | altgr-shift-~ u |
| Ŭ | altgr-shift-9 shift-u | altgr-shift-\ shift-u | altgr-shift-~ shift+u |
Another option is to use a keyboard layout that supports the Compose key (usually mapped to the right alt or to one of the windows keys). Then, "compose-u u" will combine the character u with the breve, and "compose-shift-6 s" will combine the character s with the circumflex (assuming "shift-6" is the position of the caret).
In GNOME, there exists a separate keyboard layout for Esperanto, replacing unused characters in Esperanto with the non-ASCII characters. A separate keyboard layout for Esperanto is available in KDE, too.
If necessary, install and use high quality fonts that have Esperanto glyphs, like Microsoft Web core fonts (free for personal use) or DejaVu (The Bitstream Vera glyphs have the Bitstream Vera license and DejaVu extensions are in public domain).
There is also a neat applet available for the gnome-panel called "Character Palette" and one can add the following characters to a new palette for quick placement from their panel menu bar. ĈĉĜĝĤĥĴĵŜŝŬŭ The Character Palette applet makes for a quick and easy way to add Esperanto Characters to a web browser or text document. One must only simply select their newly created palette and click a letter and that letter will be waiting on their system clipboard waiting to be pasted into the document.
Read more about this topic: Esperanto Orthography, Unicode, Practical Unicode For Esperanto