Re: Playing Card Symbols

[debian-user]

Richmond  wrote:
> debian-u...@howorth.org.uk writes:
> 
> 
> >> I tried this in rxvt(-unicode), xterm, and lxterm (which is
> >> apparently part of the xterm package -- never heard of it
> >> before!).  
> >
> > It's lxterminal, not lxterm, and it's part of LXDE so I'm surprised
> > if it's bundled with xterm.
> >  
> 
> lxterm and lxterminal are two different things.
> 
> lxterm, and uxterm, are wrappers for xterm.

Ah, good to know. That explains why Greg couldn't reproduce my result
by using the wrong program :)

Re: Playing Card Symbols

[Richmond]

debian-u...@howorth.org.uk writes:


>> I tried this in rxvt(-unicode), xterm, and lxterm (which is apparently
>> part of the xterm package -- never heard of it before!).
>
> It's lxterminal, not lxterm, and it's part of LXDE so I'm surprised if
> it's bundled with xterm.
>

lxterm and lxterminal are two different things.

lxterm, and uxterm, are wrappers for xterm.

Re: Playing Card Symbols

[Greg Wooledge]

On Tue, Mar 28, 2023 at 05:19:09PM +0100, debian-u...@howorth.org.uk wrote:
> Greg Wooledge  wrote:
> > Interstingly, though, in rxvt-unicode, if I only press Ctrl-Shift and
> > skip the U, a small region of the terminal window (lower left corner,
> > which is annoyingly right where the cursor is) is colored yellow and
> > says "ISO 14755 mode".  If I keep holding Ctrl-Shift and type 2660
> > then the yellow region gets bigger and shows lots of text, including
> > a spade character.  When I release the Ctrl and Shift keys, the
> > yellow goes away, and I'm left with just a spade character typed into
> > the shell.

> The mechanism is specified by the standard ISO 41755, but it doesn't
> specify the introducer sequence. I have no idea how it is enabled or
> disabled.

I believe you've mistyped the number, and actually mean 14755, unless
my Google-fu is extremely bad.

In any case, this is clearly implemented at the terminal (or other GUI
app) level, not at the text editor level.  So it "works" in vim for
you, because you're running vim in a terminal which supports this
feature.  And it "doesn't work" in vim for me in xterm, because xterm
doesn't support it.

 also suggests Ctrl+Shift
as the "beginning key sequence", but this is clearly just meant as one
possible implementation choice.

Re: Playing Card Symbols

[debian-user]

Greg Wooledge  wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 27, 2023 at 08:45:18PM +0100, debian-u...@howorth.org.uk
> wrote:
> > Greg Wooledge  wrote:  
> > > Just to be clear, are you using some kind of Desktop Environment
> > > specific means of entering these Unicode characters?  I don't know
> > > what CTRL-SHIFT-Uunicode means.  If I try it here, it just gets
> > > interpreted as Ctrl-U which kills the line I'm typing in vim.  
> > 
> > No, he's using a standard keyboard mechanism which works well inside
> > gvim here for example, or in a normal terminal (lxterminal to be
> > precise). You hold down CTRL and SHIFT and then press U. You should
> > see an underlined lower case letter U. Now type the four digit
> > code, e.g. 2660. You will see the digits be echoed, also underlined
> > and perhaps with a coloured background. Now press ENTER and the
> > whole lot is magically replaced with a 'black spade suit' glyph.  
> 
> I tried this in rxvt(-unicode), xterm, and lxterm (which is apparently
> part of the xterm package -- never heard of it before!).

It's lxterminal, not lxterm, and it's part of LXDE so I'm surprised if
it's bundled with xterm.

> In all 3 terminals, Ctrl-Shift-U simply acts like Ctrl-U.  If there's
> already text typed at the bash prompt, it's all erased.  If there's no
> text typed at the bash prompt, it beeps.

It seems to be a somewhat complex thing. It might be invoked by ibus,
apparently, but I don't have that installed. I don't know what all the
possibilities are for enabling or disabling the facility. You can see
it described at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_keyboard_shortcuts under the
heading of Insert Unicode for linux. There's no qualification there,
unfortunately.

> Interstingly, though, in rxvt-unicode, if I only press Ctrl-Shift and
> skip the U, a small region of the terminal window (lower left corner,
> which is annoyingly right where the cursor is) is colored yellow and
> says "ISO 14755 mode".  If I keep holding Ctrl-Shift and type 2660
> then the yellow region gets bigger and shows lots of text, including
> a spade character.  When I release the Ctrl and Shift keys, the
> yellow goes away, and I'm left with just a spade character typed into
> the shell.
> 
> This is a feature I was not previously aware of.  It also doesn't work
> in xterm or lxterm.
> 
> You spoke of gvim, which I don't have installed, but which I'm fairly
> sure is a GUI program.  So, I tried a GUI program -- Google Chrome.  I
> opened a new tab and went to google.com which I know has a text entry
> widget.  In the text entry widget, I tried this Ctrl-Shift-U thing,
> and there, it works as you claimed it should.  Space and Enter both
> seem to terminate the Unicode entry.  "x" does not.

It works here in both vim (the terminal-based editor) and gvim (the
identically-functioned separate window-based version). Hitting space
instead of enter causes it to erase everything back to and including
the CTRL-SHIFT-U.

> It also works in Firefox.
> 
> So it looks like this "standard keyboard mechanism" is part of some
> GUI toolkit, either X11, or GTK+, or something along those lines.
> It definitely doesn't work in a regular X terminal, nor would I expect
> it to.

The mechanism is specified by the standard ISO 41755, but it doesn't
specify the introducer sequence. I have no idea how it is enabled or
disabled.

Re: Playing Card Symbols

[Siard]

Charles Curley:
> Siard:
> 
> > To type ♠ , for example:
> > 
> > - hold Ctrl+Shift
> > - type U2660
> > - release Ctrl+Shift
> 
> Nice to know about, but it requires knowing the UTF code for the
> characters you want. That's a bit like trying to navigate the Internet
> with IP addresses instead of fully qualified domain names.
> 
> I think for day-to-day use I'll stick to using the compose key.

Yes, the compose key is the preferred method, but for symbols that are not
available for it, the above method remains.

Example: 
'black heart' ♥  = compose key + <3
'white heart' ♡  = the above method with U2661

gucharmap may be used to find the codes, and I also found
https://unicode-explorer.com to be very useful.

And if you use a symbol like ♡ more often, you can turn it into a
character to be used with the compose key yourself, like David Wright
described.

Re: Playing Card Symbols

[tomas]

On Mon, Mar 27, 2023 at 04:23:34PM -0600, Charles Curley wrote:
> On Mon, 27 Mar 2023 21:20:45 +0200
> Siard  wrote:
> 
> > To type ♠ , for example:
> > 
> > - hold Ctrl+Shift
> > - type U2660
> > - release Ctrl+Shift
> 
> Nice to know about, but it requires knowing the UTF code for the
> characters you want. That's a bit like trying to navigate the Internet
> with IP addresses instead of fully qualified domain names.

And then there's Emacs: C-X 8  spade  gives you a choice
of UTF-8 characters which contain "SPADE" in their descriptions.

So if you know your character is called "mumble mumble DIAMOND mumble",
you'll find it.

Or you may enter the code point, if you know it.

Cheers
-- 
t


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: Playing Card Symbols

[davidson]

On Mon, 27 Mar 2023 Jude DaShiell wrote:

[My mail client is] alpine for now.  If I can't fix it I'll have to
switch and that's alpine running on panix.com.  I'll look through
the configuration and find what I can.


I read most email in a VT (ie, a linux console) with alpine. And I set
emacs as my editor in my alpine config.

When a message contains a few isolated unicode characters that the
VT's codeset* doesn't distinguish (displays as diamonds), I sometimes
start a reply (including original message), and then I can use emacs's
describe-char function to get descriptions of them.

A workaround, in other words.


On Mon, 27 Mar 2023, Greg Wooledge wrote:

On Mon, Mar 27, 2023 at 04:10:37PM -0400, Jude DaShiell wrote:

I'm using espeak-ng and reading this message with the symbols in it only
generated silence when trying to read the symbols.


AFAIK, all unicode characters are assigned unique descriptive names.


I'm using utf-8 here and don't have any kind of font chosen or set
so far as I know.  On my end all of this is happening in the
console environment.


You may be using UTF-8 in your terminal, but your email was sent with
"7bit" encoding.  The playing card suit glyphs were all replaced with
question marks.

So, I think there's something wrong in your mail client.


* From console-setup(5): "The font specification consists of three
  parameters - codeset, font face and font size.  The codeset
  specifies what characters will be supported by the font."

--
Believe you do in the church, not infront of the computer, when we see
the output we can conclude ourself. -- deloptes

Re: Playing Card Symbols

[Max Nikulin]

On 28/03/2023 03:10, Greg Wooledge wrote:

In all 3 terminals, Ctrl-Shift-U simply acts like Ctrl-U.  If there's
already text typed at the bash prompt, it's all erased.  If there's no
text typed at the bash prompt, it beeps.


It may depend on X inputMethod setting in xterm, whether ibus or some 
other input method application is running, values of some environment 
variables that controls behavior or UI toolkits. Some examples that may 
be partially obsolete:


Gnome settings (input method can not be disabled):
- org.freedesktop.ibus.panel.emoji unicode-hotkey ['u']
- org.freedesktop.ibus.panel.emoji hotkey ['e']

Unsure if the following affects something nowadays, but several years 
ago I used it to allow [Ctrl+Shift+u] shortcut in QtCreator and to avoid 
annoying delay of keyboard layout switching in the case of ibus (Xkb 
works instantly)


GTK_IM_MODULE= #ibus
QT_IM_MODULE=  #ibus
XMODIFIERS=#"@im=ibus"

And more similar variables:
QT4_IM_MODULE=ibus
CLUTTER_IM_MODULE=ibus

I spent some time trying to find a good description of ibus 
infrastructure and its interaction with other applications. Finally I 
decided that it is hardly useful for me since I do not need features 
must have for CJK. On the other hand input methods such as LaTeX do not 
play well with non-latin Xkb layout.


Compose key is a Xkb feature and works independently of ibus.

Re: Playing Card Symbols

[songbird]

Greg Wooledge wrote:
...
> I tried this in rxvt(-unicode), xterm, and lxterm (which is apparently
> part of the xterm package -- never heard of it before!).
>
> In all 3 terminals, Ctrl-Shift-U simply acts like Ctrl-U.  If there's
> already text typed at the bash prompt, it's all erased.  If there's no
> text typed at the bash prompt, it beeps.
>
> Interstingly, though, in rxvt-unicode, if I only press Ctrl-Shift and
> skip the U, a small region of the terminal window (lower left corner,
> which is annoyingly right where the cursor is) is colored yellow and
> says "ISO 14755 mode".  If I keep holding Ctrl-Shift and type 2660 then
> the yellow region gets bigger and shows lots of text, including a spade
> character.  When I release the Ctrl and Shift keys, the yellow goes away,
> and I'm left with just a spade character typed into the shell.
>
> This is a feature I was not previously aware of.  It also doesn't work
> in xterm or lxterm.

  hmmm, it does work in MATE mate-terminal using slrn and vi with 
the following environment variables set:

COLORTERM=truecolor
TERM=xterm-256color

  i haven't tried it in any others.


...
> It also works in Firefox.

  good to know.  :)


> So it looks like this "standard keyboard mechanism" is part of some
> GUI toolkit, either X11, or GTK+, or something along those lines.
> It definitely doesn't work in a regular X terminal, nor would I expect
> it to.


  songbird

Re: Playing Card Symbols

[Thomas George]

Should have included ♠ ♡ ♢ ♣

The unicodes are 2660, 2661, 2662 and 2663

On 3/27/23 12:04, Thomas George wrote:

I am amazed that the playing card symbols spade, heart, diamond and 
club don't appear any of the collections in my Debian Buster programs. 
I can insert them in the text I type by entering CTRL-SHIFT-Uunicode 
but if this text in a Thunderbird email to a friend he receives only 
the unicode.


I don't understand why these symbols are not as ubiquitous as all the 
smiley faces.

Re: Playing Card Symbols

[Thomas George]

Try BridgeBaseOnline

On 3/27/23 17:44, D.J.J. Ring, Jr. wrote:
Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a TEXT CONSOLE - no GUI running - so 
you could play cards.


Even better would be a networked card game. s for shuffle the cards, d 
for deal (with prompt for how many people), w for draw cards, I guess.


David

On Mon, Mar 27, 2023 at 2:13 PM Jude DaShiell  wrote:

You know, if all of those symbols were in some font set and had text
labels attached to them that could speak when a screen reader was
used a
whole bunch of playing card applications would suddenly become
accessible
for screen reader users.

-- 
Jude 

"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and amo.
Please use in that order."
Ed Howdershelt 1940.

On Mon, 27 Mar 2023, Charles Curley wrote:

> On Mon, 27 Mar 2023 12:04:53 -0400
> Thomas George  wrote:
>
> > I am amazed that the playing card symbols spade, heart,
diamond and
> > club don't appear any of the collections in my Debian Buster
> > programs. I can insert them in the text I type by entering
> > CTRL-SHIFT-Uunicode but if this text in a Thunderbird email to a
> > friend he receives only the unicode.
>
> What do you mean by "CTRL-SHIFT-Uunicode"? What do you mean by "he
> receives only the unicode"?
>
> Since you are on this list, I assume you are running a recent
version
> of Debian and Thunderbird. The playing card symbols are unicode
> characters, the same as A, ;, or {. They just aren't on your
> keyboard. You even have your choice of black ? or white ?. There are
> also characters for individual playing cards: ?.
>
> There are a number of ways to get them. One way is to look
> them up in another program, such as gucharmap (in the package of the
> same name) and copy them to your email, which is what I just did.
>
> Once you send your email, displaying those characters is your
> recipient's problem. If he doesn't have the characters to display,
> chances are his display software will show some place-holder. I
> conjecture that what you mean by "he receives only the unicode"
is that
> he sees a placeholder instead of the character.
>
>
>

Re: Playing Card Symbols

[Thomas George]

On 3/27/23 17:44, D.J.J. Ring, Jr. wrote:
Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a TEXT CONSOLE - no GUI running - so 
you could play cards.


Even better would be a networked card game. s for shuffle the cards, d 
for deal (with prompt for how many people), w for draw cards, I guess.


David

On Mon, Mar 27, 2023 at 2:13 PM Jude DaShiell  wrote:

You know, if all of those symbols were in some font set and had text
labels attached to them that could speak when a screen reader was
used a
whole bunch of playing card applications would suddenly become
accessible
for screen reader users.

-- 
Jude 

"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and amo.
Please use in that order."
Ed Howdershelt 1940.

On Mon, 27 Mar 2023, Charles Curley wrote:

> On Mon, 27 Mar 2023 12:04:53 -0400
> Thomas George  wrote:
>
> > I am amazed that the playing card symbols spade, heart,
diamond and
> > club don't appear any of the collections in my Debian Buster
> > programs. I can insert them in the text I type by entering
> > CTRL-SHIFT-Uunicode but if this text in a Thunderbird email to a
> > friend he receives only the unicode.
>
> What do you mean by "CTRL-SHIFT-Uunicode"? What do you mean by "he
> receives only the unicode"?
>
> Since you are on this list, I assume you are running a recent
version
> of Debian and Thunderbird. The playing card symbols are unicode
> characters, the same as A, ;, or {. They just aren't on your
> keyboard. You even have your choice of black ? or white ?. There are
> also characters for individual playing cards: ?.
>
> There are a number of ways to get them. One way is to look
> them up in another program, such as gucharmap (in the package of the
> same name) and copy them to your email, which is what I just did.
>
> Once you send your email, displaying those characters is your
> recipient's problem. If he doesn't have the characters to display,
> chances are his display software will show some place-holder. I
> conjecture that what you mean by "he receives only the unicode"
is that
> he sees a placeholder instead of the character.
>
>
>

Re: Playing Card Symbols

[Charles Curley]

On Mon, 27 Mar 2023 21:20:45 +0200
Siard  wrote:

> To type ♠ , for example:
> 
> - hold Ctrl+Shift
> - type U2660
> - release Ctrl+Shift

Nice to know about, but it requires knowing the UTF code for the
characters you want. That's a bit like trying to navigate the Internet
with IP addresses instead of fully qualified domain names.

I think for day-to-day use I'll stick to using the compose key.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compose_key

https://duncanlock.net/blog/2013/05/03/how-to-set-your-compose-key-on-xfce-xubuntu-lxde-linux/

https://www.x.org/releases/current/doc/libX11/i18n/compose/en_US.UTF-8.html

-- 
Does anybody read signatures any more?

https://charlescurley.com
https://charlescurley.com/blog/

Re: Playing Card Symbols

[D.J.J. Ring, Jr.]

Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a TEXT CONSOLE - no GUI running - so you
could play cards.

Even better would be a networked card game. s for shuffle the cards, d for
deal (with prompt for how many people), w for draw cards, I guess.

David

On Mon, Mar 27, 2023 at 2:13 PM Jude DaShiell  wrote:

> You know, if all of those symbols were in some font set and had text
> labels attached to them that could speak when a screen reader was used a
> whole bunch of playing card applications would suddenly become accessible
> for screen reader users.
>
> --
> Jude 
> "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
> soap, ballot, jury, and amo.
> Please use in that order."
> Ed Howdershelt 1940.
>
> On Mon, 27 Mar 2023, Charles Curley wrote:
>
> > On Mon, 27 Mar 2023 12:04:53 -0400
> > Thomas George  wrote:
> >
> > > I am amazed that the playing card symbols spade, heart, diamond and
> > > club don't appear any of the collections in my Debian Buster
> > > programs. I can insert them in the text I type by entering
> > > CTRL-SHIFT-Uunicode but if this text in a Thunderbird email to a
> > > friend he receives only the unicode.
> >
> > What do you mean by "CTRL-SHIFT-Uunicode"? What do you mean by "he
> > receives only the unicode"?
> >
> > Since you are on this list, I assume you are running a recent version
> > of Debian and Thunderbird. The playing card symbols are unicode
> > characters, the same as A, ;, or {. They just aren't on your
> > keyboard. You even have your choice of black ? or white ?. There are
> > also characters for individual playing cards: ?.
> >
> > There are a number of ways to get them. One way is to look
> > them up in another program, such as gucharmap (in the package of the
> > same name) and copy them to your email, which is what I just did.
> >
> > Once you send your email, displaying those characters is your
> > recipient's problem. If he doesn't have the characters to display,
> > chances are his display software will show some place-holder. I
> > conjecture that what you mean by "he receives only the unicode" is that
> > he sees a placeholder instead of the character.
> >
> >
> >
>
>

Re: Playing Card Symbols

[Jude DaShiell]

that's alpine for now.  If I can't fix it I'll have to switch and that's
alpine running on panix.com.  I'll look through the configuration and find
what I can.


-- Jude  "There are four boxes to be used in
defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and amo. Please use in that
order." Ed Howdershelt 1940.

On Mon, 27 Mar 2023, Greg Wooledge wrote:

> On Mon, Mar 27, 2023 at 04:10:37PM -0400, Jude DaShiell wrote:
> > I'm using espeak-ng and reading this message with the symbols in it only
> > generated silence when trying to read the symbols.  I'm using utf-8 here
> > and don't have any kind of font chosen or set so far as I know.  On my end
> > all of this is happening in the console environment.
>
> You may be using UTF-8 in your terminal, but your email was sent with
> "7bit" encoding.  The playing card suit glyphs were all replaced with
> question marks.
>
> So, I think there's something wrong in your mail client.
>
>

Re: Playing Card Symbols

[Greg Wooledge]

On Mon, Mar 27, 2023 at 04:10:37PM -0400, Jude DaShiell wrote:
> I'm using espeak-ng and reading this message with the symbols in it only
> generated silence when trying to read the symbols.  I'm using utf-8 here
> and don't have any kind of font chosen or set so far as I know.  On my end
> all of this is happening in the console environment.

You may be using UTF-8 in your terminal, but your email was sent with
"7bit" encoding.  The playing card suit glyphs were all replaced with
question marks.

So, I think there's something wrong in your mail client.

Re: Playing Card Symbols

[Jude DaShiell]

I'm using espeak-ng and reading this message with the symbols in it only
generated silence when trying to read the symbols.  I'm using utf-8 here
and don't have any kind of font chosen or set so far as I know.  On my end
all of this is happening in the console environment.


-- Jude  "There are four boxes to be used in
defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and amo. Please use in that
order." Ed Howdershelt 1940.

On Mon, 27 Mar 2023, debian-u...@howorth.org.uk wrote:

> Greg Wooledge  wrote:
> > On Mon, Mar 27, 2023 at 12:04:53PM -0400, Thomas George wrote:
> > > I am amazed that the playing card symbols spade, heart, diamond and
> > > club don't appear any of the collections in my Debian Buster
> > > programs. I can insert them in the text I type by entering
> > > CTRL-SHIFT-Uunicode but if this text in a Thunderbird email to a
> > > friend he receives only the unicode.
> >
> > If you paste, or type, one of these Unicode characters into the body
> > of your email, and if your Mail User Agent correctly encodes it and
> > sets the right MIME headers, then it should work as intended.
> >
> > ? ? ? ?
> >
> > I'm using mutt, and it looks like mutt is going to send this message
> > encoded as "text/plain, 8bit, utf-8".
> >
> > The reading MUA will have to be able to display these characters
> > (something about fonts, which are not my strong point).
>
> I think that is exactly the OP's point. It is somewhat likely that the
> recipient will be using a font that does not include the playing card
> glyphs, and the OP wonders why they aren't more universal in fonts.
>
> > Just to be clear, are you using some kind of Desktop Environment
> > specific means of entering these Unicode characters?  I don't know
> > what CTRL-SHIFT-Uunicode means.  If I try it here, it just gets
> > interpreted as Ctrl-U which kills the line I'm typing in vim.
>
> No, he's using a standard keyboard mechanism which works well inside
> gvim here for example, or in a normal terminal (lxterminal to be
> precise). You hold down CTRL and SHIFT and then press U. You should see
> an underlined lower case letter U. Now type the four digit code, e.g.
> 2660. You will see the digits be echoed, also underlined and perhaps
> with a coloured background. Now press ENTER and the whole lot is
> magically replaced with a 'black spade suit' glyph.
>
> > The way I entered these characters was, first, to look up their
> > Unicode values on the web (2660, 2663, 2665 and 2666).  Then in a
> > terminal running bash, I used printf '\u2660\n' and so on.  I used
> > the mouse to copy and paste the characters from that terminal into
> > this one, where I'm writing this email (in vim, in mutt, in screen,
> > in rxvt-unicode).
>
> ? it also appears to work directly in my MUA (claws).
>
> > I could also have copy/pasted the characters from the web page where I
> > found their Unicode code point numbers.
> >
> > > I don't understand why these symbols are not as ubiquitous as all
> > > the smiley faces.
> >
> > Well, I guess card games are not as popular among the younger crowd.
>
> I suspect you may be right, which I find disappointing as an
> explanation for the phenomenon.
>
>

Re: Playing Card Symbols

[Greg Wooledge]

On Mon, Mar 27, 2023 at 08:45:18PM +0100, debian-u...@howorth.org.uk wrote:
> Greg Wooledge  wrote:
> > Just to be clear, are you using some kind of Desktop Environment
> > specific means of entering these Unicode characters?  I don't know
> > what CTRL-SHIFT-Uunicode means.  If I try it here, it just gets
> > interpreted as Ctrl-U which kills the line I'm typing in vim.
> 
> No, he's using a standard keyboard mechanism which works well inside
> gvim here for example, or in a normal terminal (lxterminal to be
> precise). You hold down CTRL and SHIFT and then press U. You should see
> an underlined lower case letter U. Now type the four digit code, e.g.
> 2660. You will see the digits be echoed, also underlined and perhaps
> with a coloured background. Now press ENTER and the whole lot is
> magically replaced with a 'black spade suit' glyph.

I tried this in rxvt(-unicode), xterm, and lxterm (which is apparently
part of the xterm package -- never heard of it before!).

In all 3 terminals, Ctrl-Shift-U simply acts like Ctrl-U.  If there's
already text typed at the bash prompt, it's all erased.  If there's no
text typed at the bash prompt, it beeps.

Interstingly, though, in rxvt-unicode, if I only press Ctrl-Shift and
skip the U, a small region of the terminal window (lower left corner,
which is annoyingly right where the cursor is) is colored yellow and
says "ISO 14755 mode".  If I keep holding Ctrl-Shift and type 2660 then
the yellow region gets bigger and shows lots of text, including a spade
character.  When I release the Ctrl and Shift keys, the yellow goes away,
and I'm left with just a spade character typed into the shell.

This is a feature I was not previously aware of.  It also doesn't work
in xterm or lxterm.

You spoke of gvim, which I don't have installed, but which I'm fairly
sure is a GUI program.  So, I tried a GUI program -- Google Chrome.  I
opened a new tab and went to google.com which I know has a text entry
widget.  In the text entry widget, I tried this Ctrl-Shift-U thing, and
there, it works as you claimed it should.  Space and Enter both seem to
terminate the Unicode entry.  "x" does not.

It also works in Firefox.

So it looks like this "standard keyboard mechanism" is part of some
GUI toolkit, either X11, or GTK+, or something along those lines.
It definitely doesn't work in a regular X terminal, nor would I expect
it to.

Re: Playing Card Symbols

[David Wright]

On Mon 27 Mar 2023 at 21:20:45 (+0200), Siard wrote:
> Charles Curley:
> > Thomas George:
> > 
> > > I am amazed that the playing card symbols spade, heart, diamond and
> > > club don't appear any of the collections in my Debian Buster
> > > programs. I can insert them in the text I type by entering
> > > CTRL-SHIFT-Uunicode but if this text in a Thunderbird email to a
> > > friend he receives only the unicode.
> > 
> > What do you mean by "CTRL-SHIFT-Uunicode"?
> 
> To type ♠ , for example:
> 
> - hold Ctrl+Shift
> - type U2660
> - release Ctrl+Shift
> 
> A slight variation, which I prefer:
> 
> - type Ctrl+Shift+U , keep nothing pressed
> - type 2660
> - type Return

Not the most obvious choice, but ♥ is already defined
in X, using your Compose Key:

  <3>  : "♥"   U2665 # BLACK HEART SUIT

If you're not familiar with this notation, you can
use it as a pattern, and place many more of your own
definitions in ~/.XCompose. Start the file with
  include "%S/en_US.UTF-8/Compose"
(locale as appropriate) or you'll lose the ones
already defined by the system.

If you want them in VCs too, then adding them to
/etc/console-setup/remap.inc is more appropriate:
it has a different syntax and is trickier to set up.

Cheers,
David.

Re: Playing Card Symbols

[debian-user]

Michael Stone  wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 27, 2023 at 02:13:35PM -0400, Jude DaShiell wrote:
> >You know, if all of those symbols were in some font set and had text
> >labels attached to them that could speak when a screen reader was
> >used a whole bunch of playing card applications would suddenly
> >become accessible for screen reader users.  
> 
> Some? Many? text to speech engines already translate unicode emojis
> to descriptions.

Jude, what do you hear when one occurs, such as ♠ ? It sounds like it
might be a shortcoming of whichever app you're using, or perhaps of
whichever font you're using?

Re: Playing Card Symbols

[debian-user]

Greg Wooledge  wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 27, 2023 at 12:04:53PM -0400, Thomas George wrote:
> > I am amazed that the playing card symbols spade, heart, diamond and
> > club don't appear any of the collections in my Debian Buster
> > programs. I can insert them in the text I type by entering
> > CTRL-SHIFT-Uunicode but if this text in a Thunderbird email to a
> > friend he receives only the unicode.  
> 
> If you paste, or type, one of these Unicode characters into the body
> of your email, and if your Mail User Agent correctly encodes it and
> sets the right MIME headers, then it should work as intended.
> 
> ♣ ♦ ♥ ♠
> 
> I'm using mutt, and it looks like mutt is going to send this message
> encoded as "text/plain, 8bit, utf-8".
> 
> The reading MUA will have to be able to display these characters
> (something about fonts, which are not my strong point).

I think that is exactly the OP's point. It is somewhat likely that the
recipient will be using a font that does not include the playing card
glyphs, and the OP wonders why they aren't more universal in fonts.

> Just to be clear, are you using some kind of Desktop Environment
> specific means of entering these Unicode characters?  I don't know
> what CTRL-SHIFT-Uunicode means.  If I try it here, it just gets
> interpreted as Ctrl-U which kills the line I'm typing in vim.

No, he's using a standard keyboard mechanism which works well inside
gvim here for example, or in a normal terminal (lxterminal to be
precise). You hold down CTRL and SHIFT and then press U. You should see
an underlined lower case letter U. Now type the four digit code, e.g.
2660. You will see the digits be echoed, also underlined and perhaps
with a coloured background. Now press ENTER and the whole lot is
magically replaced with a 'black spade suit' glyph.

> The way I entered these characters was, first, to look up their
> Unicode values on the web (2660, 2663, 2665 and 2666).  Then in a
> terminal running bash, I used printf '\u2660\n' and so on.  I used
> the mouse to copy and paste the characters from that terminal into
> this one, where I'm writing this email (in vim, in mutt, in screen,
> in rxvt-unicode).

♠ it also appears to work directly in my MUA (claws).

> I could also have copy/pasted the characters from the web page where I
> found their Unicode code point numbers.
> 
> > I don't understand why these symbols are not as ubiquitous as all
> > the smiley faces.  
> 
> Well, I guess card games are not as popular among the younger crowd.

I suspect you may be right, which I find disappointing as an
explanation for the phenomenon.

Re: Playing Card Symbols

[Siard]

Charles Curley:
> Thomas George:
> 
> > I am amazed that the playing card symbols spade, heart, diamond and
> > club don't appear any of the collections in my Debian Buster
> > programs. I can insert them in the text I type by entering
> > CTRL-SHIFT-Uunicode but if this text in a Thunderbird email to a
> > friend he receives only the unicode.
> 
> What do you mean by "CTRL-SHIFT-Uunicode"?

To type ♠ , for example:

- hold Ctrl+Shift
- type U2660
- release Ctrl+Shift

A slight variation, which I prefer:

- type Ctrl+Shift+U , keep nothing pressed
- type 2660
- type Return

Re: Playing Card Symbols

[Michael Stone]

On Mon, Mar 27, 2023 at 02:13:35PM -0400, Jude DaShiell wrote:

You know, if all of those symbols were in some font set and had text
labels attached to them that could speak when a screen reader was used a
whole bunch of playing card applications would suddenly become accessible
for screen reader users.


Some? Many? text to speech engines already translate unicode emojis to 
descriptions.

Re: Playing Card Symbols

[Jude DaShiell]

You know, if all of those symbols were in some font set and had text
labels attached to them that could speak when a screen reader was used a
whole bunch of playing card applications would suddenly become accessible
for screen reader users.

-- 
Jude 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and amo.
Please use in that order."
Ed Howdershelt 1940.

On Mon, 27 Mar 2023, Charles Curley wrote:

> On Mon, 27 Mar 2023 12:04:53 -0400
> Thomas George  wrote:
>
> > I am amazed that the playing card symbols spade, heart, diamond and
> > club don't appear any of the collections in my Debian Buster
> > programs. I can insert them in the text I type by entering
> > CTRL-SHIFT-Uunicode but if this text in a Thunderbird email to a
> > friend he receives only the unicode.
>
> What do you mean by "CTRL-SHIFT-Uunicode"? What do you mean by "he
> receives only the unicode"?
>
> Since you are on this list, I assume you are running a recent version
> of Debian and Thunderbird. The playing card symbols are unicode
> characters, the same as A, ;, or {. They just aren't on your
> keyboard. You even have your choice of black ? or white ?. There are
> also characters for individual playing cards: ?.
>
> There are a number of ways to get them. One way is to look
> them up in another program, such as gucharmap (in the package of the
> same name) and copy them to your email, which is what I just did.
>
> Once you send your email, displaying those characters is your
> recipient's problem. If he doesn't have the characters to display,
> chances are his display software will show some place-holder. I
> conjecture that what you mean by "he receives only the unicode" is that
> he sees a placeholder instead of the character.
>
>
>

Re: Playing Card Symbols

[gene heskett]

On 3/27/23 13:51, Charles Curley wrote:

On Mon, 27 Mar 2023 12:04:53 -0400
Thomas George  wrote:


I am amazed that the playing card symbols spade, heart, diamond and
club don't appear any of the collections in my Debian Buster
programs. I can insert them in the text I type by entering
CTRL-SHIFT-Uunicode but if this text in a Thunderbird email to a
friend he receives only the unicode.


What do you mean by "CTRL-SHIFT-Uunicode"? What do you mean by "he
receives only the unicode"?

Since you are on this list, I assume you are running a recent version
of Debian and Thunderbird. The playing card symbols are unicode
characters, the same as A, ;, or {. They just aren't on your
keyboard. You even have your choice of black ♠ or white ♤. There are
also characters for individual playing cards: .

There are a number of ways to get them. One way is to look
them up in another program, such as gucharmap (in the package of the
same name) and copy them to your email, which is what I just did.

Once you send your email, displaying those characters is your
recipient's problem. If he doesn't have the characters to display,
chances are his display software will show some place-holder. I
conjecture that what you mean by "he receives only the unicode" is that
he sees a placeholder instead of the character.


I should point out, that so far in this thread, all of the samples sent
by the various responders have been properly displayed by the current
debian 11 thunderbird here.


Cheers, Gene Heskett.
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page 

Re: Playing Card Symbols

[Charles Curley]

On Mon, 27 Mar 2023 12:04:53 -0400
Thomas George  wrote:

> I am amazed that the playing card symbols spade, heart, diamond and
> club don't appear any of the collections in my Debian Buster
> programs. I can insert them in the text I type by entering
> CTRL-SHIFT-Uunicode but if this text in a Thunderbird email to a
> friend he receives only the unicode.

What do you mean by "CTRL-SHIFT-Uunicode"? What do you mean by "he
receives only the unicode"?

Since you are on this list, I assume you are running a recent version
of Debian and Thunderbird. The playing card symbols are unicode
characters, the same as A, ;, or {. They just aren't on your
keyboard. You even have your choice of black ♠ or white ♤. There are
also characters for individual playing cards: .

There are a number of ways to get them. One way is to look
them up in another program, such as gucharmap (in the package of the
same name) and copy them to your email, which is what I just did.

Once you send your email, displaying those characters is your
recipient's problem. If he doesn't have the characters to display,
chances are his display software will show some place-holder. I
conjecture that what you mean by "he receives only the unicode" is that
he sees a placeholder instead of the character.


-- 
Does anybody read signatures any more?

https://charlescurley.com
https://charlescurley.com/blog/

Re: Playing Card Symbols

[Greg Wooledge]

On Mon, Mar 27, 2023 at 12:04:53PM -0400, Thomas George wrote:
> I am amazed that the playing card symbols spade, heart, diamond and club
> don't appear any of the collections in my Debian Buster programs. I can
> insert them in the text I type by entering CTRL-SHIFT-Uunicode but if this
> text in a Thunderbird email to a friend he receives only the unicode.

If you paste, or type, one of these Unicode characters into the body
of your email, and if your Mail User Agent correctly encodes it and
sets the right MIME headers, then it should work as intended.

♣ ♦ ♥ ♠

I'm using mutt, and it looks like mutt is going to send this message
encoded as "text/plain, 8bit, utf-8".

The reading MUA will have to be able to display these characters (something
about fonts, which are not my strong point).

Just to be clear, are you using some kind of Desktop Environment specific
means of entering these Unicode characters?  I don't know what
CTRL-SHIFT-Uunicode means.  If I try it here, it just gets interpreted
as Ctrl-U which kills the line I'm typing in vim.

The way I entered these characters was, first, to look up their Unicode
values on the web (2660, 2663, 2665 and 2666).  Then in a terminal running
bash, I used printf '\u2660\n' and so on.  I used the mouse to copy and
paste the characters from that terminal into this one, where I'm writing
this email (in vim, in mutt, in screen, in rxvt-unicode).

I could also have copy/pasted the characters from the web page where I
found their Unicode code point numbers.

> I don't understand why these symbols are not as ubiquitous as all the smiley
> faces.

Well, I guess card games are not as popular among the younger crowd.