Bug 430162

SUMMARY

The alternative characters palette may benefit from other
keyboard-based shortcuts. The current "type the number" shortcut
may be cumbersome on some keyboard layouts (e.g. French).

CONTEXT

The newly announced palette was featured in a "This week in KDE"
article, this led to a discussion about palette keyboard shortcuts
here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/k71i6n/this_week_in_kde_big_new_accentedalternative/gep8j35/?context=1

One worry about typing a digit to select a character is that on
some keyboards, the digits are accessed in combination with the
Shift key. Alternatively, they may be input using the keypad, for
those who still have one.

In both cases, significant hand movement is required, which may
break fast typing, as is generally not ergonomic.

WISH

Implement other keyboard shortcuts to make it easier to select a
character with minimal hand movement. A few ideas:

* Use the F1..F9 keys to select the corresponding characters, this
  solves the Shift issue of some layouts.

* Repeatedly press the triggering letter key to select an
  alternative character, then the Space bar to confirm the choice.

* Repeatedly press the triggering letter key to select an
  alternative character, which becomes confirmed after a short
  timeout.

As a practical example in the last two ideas:

* The user would keep the E key pressed
* The palette would appear with the É È Ê characters
* The user would press E key two times, selecting the Ê character
* The user would wait a bit (or press Space) to confirm