User's manual. Section 3.

KEYBOARD(3): keyboard sequences


SYNOPSYS

        Alt key...
        

DESCRIPTION

Text input as implemented by Ink permit composition of keys. To compose a key, type Alt and then one or more keys. If the sequence of keys is a prefix of a valid sequence, the keys will not be shown, and will be collected. Once a valid sequence has been typed, the corresponding key will be inserted instead of the full sequence. If the sequence is not valid, the original keys typed will be shown, and composition will finish.

The composition sequences are those of Plan 9 from Bell Labs, but for typing of unicode code points directly, which are usually provided using the underlying terminal OS keyboard facilities. From the Plan 9 man page...

  • A repeated symbol gives a variant of that symbol, e.g., ?? yields ¿.
  • ASCII digraphs for mathematical operators give the corresponding operator, e.g., <= yields ≤.
  • Two letters give the corresponding ligature, e.g., AE yields Æ.
  • Mathematical and other symbols are given by abbreviations for their names, e.g., pg yields ¶.
  • Chess pieces are given by a w or b followed by a letter for the piece (k for king, q for queen, r for rook, n for knight, b for bishop, or p for pawn), e.g., wk for a white king.
  • Greek letters are given by an asterisk followed by a corresponding latin letter, e.g., *d yields δ.
  • Cyrillic letters are given by an at sign followed by a corresponding latin letter or letters, e.g., @ya yields я.
  • Script letters are given by a dollar sign followed by the corresponding regular letter, e.g., $F yields ℱ.
  • A digraph of a symbol followed by a letter gives the letter with an accent that looks like the symbol, e.g., ,c yields ç.
  • Two digits give the fraction with that numerator and denominator, e.g., 12 yields ½.
  • The letter s followed by a character gives that character as a superscript, e.g., s1 yields ⁱ. These characters are taken from the Unicode block 0x2070; the 1, 2, and 3 superscripts in the Latin-1 block are available by using a capital S instead of s.
  • Sometimes a pair of characters give a symbol related to the superimposition of the characters, e.g., cO yields ©.
  • A mnemonic letter followed by $ gives a currency symbol, e.g., l$ yields £.

SEE ALSO

  • net.ink(2) for the Ink package.
  • ix(1) for the UI environment using this.


    User's manual. Section 3.