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Comment by nasduia | Hacker News Reader

I really miss the compose key functionality from X11 whenever I use Mac or Windows. No need to remember weird number codes or open applets.

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You can do very similar things on macOS. `Option+E, A` generates á, `Option-U, U` yields ü, and so forth. There are tons of alternate characters available like this using the Option keys, generally covering the most used glyphs I've needed. Beyond that, the Rocket app is fantastic for finding and inserting emojis and more complicated emoticons by human-friendly name.

That’s not the same, that’s basically just AltGr. In X you can do ‘Compose, o, o’ → °, ‘Compose, C, o’ → ©’, ‘Compose, s, o’ → §, ‘Compose p o o’ → «a character HN doesn’t allow (U1F4A9)» and ~6000¹ other combinations. X also has a “mac” layout variant I’d like to hear a macOS user’s opinion of (haven’t ever wanted to use it myself).

[1]: ± some depending on if you count multiple ways of creating the same character, etc. Eg. ‘≠’ can be made by combining / and = in either order. Also ‘Compose, number, s’ for footnotes, ‘Compose, +, -’ → ±, ‘Compose , <, '’ → “‘”, ‘Compose, -, >’ → “→”, ‘Compose, =, >” → “⇒” are nice. And υɳⅰеηⅽоⅾе.

Have you checked out Karabiner[0]? I've read[1] about how you can do some pretty neat things with it.

0: https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org/

1: https://blog.jkl.gg/hacking-your-keyboard/

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