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Compose key on Mac OS X

Mac-Ompose

Compose key on macOS. Completely X Window-like.

Note this contains my modifications which you may need to modify. My settings are: CapsLock real key is Left Control and Right Command real key is Compose in the end.

Tested on 10.14.6 (Mojave) and Karabiner-Elements 12.6.0. Feel free to contact me if you have any issues.

Installation

  • Install Karabiner-Elements from https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/
  • Run ./install.sh (it saves one backup copy if overwriting)
  • Restart your user session (log out and in again).

Hacking

If you want to hack more, have a look into misc directory.

Gotchas

It generally works, but in applications that eat the <F13> key (like MacVim or iTerm) it does not work. If you have any ready solutions, please let me know. <F13> key needs to be disabled in the Terminal in order to make compose work there.

Links

  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compose_key
  • http://superuser.com/questions/202695/real-compose-key-on-mac-os
  • http://bob.cakebox.net/osxcompose.php
  • http://uscustom.sourceforge.net/
  • https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/xml.html.en#vkopenurldef
  • http://lolengine.net/blog/2012/06/17/compose-key-on-os-x
  • http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/lib/libX11/tree/nls/en_US.UTF-8/Compose.pre