Subforge

Sometimes it's useful to be able to type accented characters, especially when you use the nodeadkeys option, which effectively removes any way to type them. Known from the old days, there is the compose key. It advises xorg, that the next two keys pressed after the compose key belong together.

Examples:

compose + " + a => ä
compose + ` + e => è
compose + , + c => ç
compose + o + c => ©

There are two ways to enable it when input hot-plugging is disabled:

1) Enable it per user session e.g. in $HOME/.xinitrc

setxkbmap -option compose:caps

2) Put it into xorg.conf to enable it globally:

Section "InputDevice" 
  Option  "XkbOptions"  "compose:caps" 
EndSection

This basically turn your caps lock key into a compose key. Here is a list of the things you can compose: http://www.hermit.org/Linux/ComposeKeys.html