I have started using triple dots as on Linux I can get them with Alt Gr + .

A lot of symbols can be accessed with Alt Gr compared to Windows

▲ Symbiote 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

Enable the Compose key and you'll get even more easy symbols, and they're reasonably guessable.

  Compose ` e produces è
          " a produces ä
          v s produces š
          v S produces Š
          a e produces æ
          C = produces €
          l - produces £
          - > produces → 
        ( 1 ) produces ①
          ^ 1 produces ¹
          _ 1 produces ₁
          1 8 produces ⅛
        - - - produces —
        - - . produces –
          . . produces …
          . - produces ·
          | - produces †
          | = produces ‡
          " < produces “
          x x produces ×
          m u produces µ
          > = produces ≥

See /usr/share/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose for the list and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compose_key

I have also configured Shift+Compose to send the code 'dead_greek' using ~/.Xmodmap:

  keycode 135 = Multi_key dead_greek Multi_key Multi_key

Then I can type α, β, γ, Δ, Ε, Ζ easily, although I hardly ever need this nowadays.

▲ notpushkin 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Please don’t... Adding ellipsis as a separate character was a huge mistake, because it doesn’t work well:

- you can’t make a ?.. or !.. with it

- the spacing between the dots is awful in a lot of fonts

- it is hideous in monospace

- typing ellipsis properly is a very easy gesture (triple-tap the dot key), arguably easier than Alt Gr + . (depending on the keyboard)

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dragonwriter 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

> you can’t make a ?.. or !.. with it

But an ellipsis is separate from and doesn't mmerge with sentence-terminal punctuation, whether its a period or somethig else (when it replaces words at the end of a sentence, the terminal punctuation follows the ellipsis, when at the beginning of a sentence that follows another, the ellipsis follows the punctuation.) The constructs you say can't be formed with it aren't needed.

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notpushkin 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

Hmm, yeah, you’re right – in English this isn’t really used. However it’s a widely used punctuation in Russian (and many ex-USSR languages, too), so... no, they are needed in some cases.

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layer8 6 days ago | parent [-]

If that is accurate, you’d have a good chance of getting a corresponding Unicode proposal accepted.

	▲	notpushkin 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		It doesn’t really make sense to me – those new characters would mostly just look the same as the combination of symbols used right now, be harder to type, and share all of the other flaws I’ve mentioned above. Might be fun though!

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Moru 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

This is why we only had ascii in the start. You don't need those other characters anyway. (For english...)

Meanwhile there are a lot of languages and cultures. Somewhere all those characters were useful for something. My Atari had a very fun utility that gave you a compose-key that could combine just about everything on the keyboard to access all those weird characters of the extended ascii table. <compose>+ao would give you "a" with a ring on top (å), <compose>+ae gave the danish welded together character that I can't even type any more on windows.

The idea came from some unix thing I believe.

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notpushkin 6 days ago | parent [-]

Good news! Compose key is available in Linux natively, and for Windows there’s WinCompose by Sam Hocevar: https://wincompose.info/

	▲	Moru 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		Thanks, have tried that one but I just don't write enough and the special characters I need is natively on my keyboard. But it's very nice for those that actually do write other things than code :-)

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pxc 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I've only ever typed that character using a compose key: caps and then the same three periods.

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cwillu 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

…no.

	▲	notpushkin 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		Okay then?..

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mitthrowaway2 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

-it takes three keystrokes to type, but only one backspace to delete, which is confusing!