This function allows you to insert special characters, such as tick marks, boxes, and telephone symbols, into your text.
At present there are three ways of entering letters with accents directly from the keyboard.
Solaris: Using a Sun keyboard. First press the Compose key to the right of the space bar, then enter the first and second modifiers.
Linux / NetBSD: Using the dead-keys. In an xterm window first press the (´) or (`) key. The character should not appear on the screen. Now press a letter, such as "e". The e is given an accent, é or è. If not, then check in the XF86Config file if a "nodeadkeys" XkbdVariant has been loaded there and replace it. You may also have set the environment variable SAL-NO-DEADKEYS, which deactivates the dead-keys.
All Unix systems: (Alt Graph) as additional compose key. The (Alt Graph) key can work in Office like the Compose key, if you set the environment variable SAL-ALTGR-COMPOSE. The (Alt Graph) key must trigger a mode-switch, so, for example, xmodmap -e "keysym Alt-R = Mode-switch" must be set. First press (Alt Graph), then the first modifier, then the second modifier. The characters are combined as described on a Solaris system in the file /usr/openwin/include/X11/Suncompose.h.