compose key / irony punctuation / x11

Transcript follows:

[him] did I mention I'll be off from work earlier today because I'm
having dinner with friends.
I'll be off earlier today because I'm having dinner with friends.

[me] where did you say you were going?

[him] I'll be having dinner at the Grand Cafe

Apparently the irony was lost on him. I should’ve used emoticons.

But! Instead of emoticons, one may also use the irony punctuation: ⸮

Let’s retry that.

[me] where did you say you were going⸮

[him] ha ha
funny guy..

Excellent! So, where is that thing located on the keyboard?

The interrobang (‽) can be composed using the compose key (combine key) + exclamation mark (!) + question mark (?). The irony punctuation however, is not in the list[1].

Adding it goes like this:

# cat >> ~/.XCompose << EOF
include "%L" # import the default Compose file for your locale
<Multi_key> <slash> <question> : "⸮" U2E2E # REVERSED QUESTION MARK (IRONY PUNCTUATION)
EOF
# echo 'export GTK_IM_MODULE="xim" # Compose key stuff' >> ~/.profile
# # (lastly: restart your X session)

Now you can start being ironic and annoying more often. Just hit: compose key + slash (/) + question mark (?)

[1] /usr/share/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose

# im-config(8) generated on Thu, 07 Aug 2014 08:26:49 +0200
run_im xim
# im-config signiture: 89512b7941127eeda7d3e3ac5703f05e -