Handling of composition of characters
=========================================
Most of the fonts have much more characters than you can reach directly
through the keyboard. To access all of them you may use showconsolefont, 
deduce the decimal code and enter it by holding down <alt> and entering 
the code via the keypad. There's a much better way, though:
Most characters may be entered via composition. Many characters are just
consisting of a standard character with some sort of accent or change.
Such characters can be composed by composition. Just press the <compose>
key, let it go again, enter the accent and then the letter.
Some examples: (Assuming Iso-Latin-1/9 character set:)
<compose> " a => ä
<compose> , c => ç
<compose> | S => $

Support for composition is unfortunately not contained in most keymaps.
Most lack two things:
(a) The <compose> key is not mapped
(b) The compose tables are not included

The kbd setup scripts uses another /etc/sysconfig/keyboard variable to
determine which compose tables should be loaded and whether the compose key
should be mapped: COMPOSETABLE.
For all words listed there, loadkeys will be called with the argument
compose.word. (Except for clear which sets a flag to clear the compose
table.) Look at the compose.* files in /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/include/:
(a) You find there two files for having the <compose> key mapped.
(b) You find there compose tables which are suitable for different 
    character sets.

ad (a): winkeys:   The compose key will be mapped on the W*n menu key
        shiftctrl: The compose key will be mapped to Shift Ctrl.
        You can use both, if you like.
ad (b): latin, latinX, latin1.add, 8859_X: Contains the compose 
	combinations suitable for the respective character set. 
	Many people will want to use latin1 or latin1.add. Just
	using latin is also sort of an acceptable compromise for
	many Latin character sets.
	YOU MAY ONLY USE ONE OF THOSE.
	If you want the combination of more than one table, you
	have to create a file which includes what you want.

Example: (/etc/sysconfig/keyboard)
COMPOSETABLE="clear winkeys shiftctrl latin1.add"

Please keep in mind, that all these settings only affect the console, 
i.e. text mode.

				Your SuSE team