To enter a unicode character directly on your Ubuntu system do the following:
- Press
[Ctrl]-[Shift]-[u] - Enter the unicode hex code of the character you want to type
- Press
[Space]or[Enter]to confirm your input.
To be able to do so is great because I often used the ASCII character combination -> to mean an arrow pointing right. I used this to talk about tree structures like nested menu entries (like: File -> Save As). When most browsers and website systems started supporting Unicode, every time I wanted to enter the Unicode arrow pointing right instead of the ugly ASCII chars I did a google search for unicode characters and clicked on http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/arrows.html to copy the character. Now I am able to enter the char directly (as long as I remember the unicode hex code :D )
So to complete this example I show you how to enter the unicode arrow right: It has the unicode value U+2192. So you have to press [Ctrl]-[Shift]-[u] then enter 2192 and [Space] and you’re going to get →.
References:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_input#Hex_input
- and http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/13344/ (comment by descentspb on Sep 19 2008 at 12:54)
