Alt key codes don't work

[Joe Anderson]

In Ubuntu, one can't use alt key codes such as Alt+0252 to produce an umlauted u like you can in Windows. This problematic for users entering symbols (such as ¤, ¥, § and °) and may confuse new Ubuntu users who are familiar to this method of inputting accents. Whilst the compose key is possibly better, users should have the choice.

[Markus Thielmann (thielmann)]

Thanks for your suggestion. However, the changes you are requesting aren't really a bug and require more discussion, which should be done on an appropriate mailing list or forum. <http://www.ubuntu.com/community/forums/> might be a good start.

You'll find an appropriate solution at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode#Input_methods:

"Gnome provides a 'Character Map' utility (Applications/Accessories/Character Map) which displays characters ordered by Unicode block or by writing system, and allows searching by character name or extended description. Where the character's code point is known, it can be entered in accordance with ISO 14755: hold down Ctrl and Shift and enter the hexadecimal Unicode value, preceded by the letter U if using GNOME 2.15 or later. The input code is an UTF-32 value. For example, type Ctrl+Shift+100050 to type a character in Unicode private plane 16."

[komputes (komputes)]

I would like to confirm the importance of having Alt codes. Many new users have already memorized accents using alt key codes and asking them to memorize longer unicode key codes is not being realistic. I see this bug as a reasonable feature request to add a graphical method to enable alt key codes for accents.

This should be an option in System > Preferences > Keyboard > Layout (Tab) > Options (button)

Another solution would be to package the alt key codes so that it only happens (or the option only shows up) when the package is installed.

[Mechanical snail (replicator-snail)]

I see no reason to overload the Alt keys for everyone just to support an unintuitive legacy input method. (Avoiding "confus[ing] new Ubuntu users who are familiar to this method of inputting accents" would entail enabling Alt codes by default.)
If you're regularly typing ¤, ¥, §, °, etc., it's simpler and more intuitive to switch to a relevant keyboard layout, even if you already know the alt-codes.