How can I insert/type a blank character using my keyboard?

I'm back on my BS 🤪@lemmy.world to Linux 101 stuff. Questions are encouraged, noobs are welcome!@lemmy.world – 11 points –

Sometimes adding a blank character helps with formatting. For example on Lemmy, it helps me separate lines of text if I insert a blank character between other lines. Currently, do that by copy-and-pasting the blank character from elsewhere. Here is an example

Is there a way I can do this on Linux easily from the keyboard? I am using KDE Neon and have the compose key enabled so that I can easily type uncommon characters like ‽, ñ, and é easily.

10

Most people don't seem to know this, but you can in fact do line breaks on lemmy, too:

For each line you want to break
add two spaces to the end of the line
then press enter just once

thank you very much!!

Another one for ya: when quoting block text with the character ">", put a ">" on the blank lines between paragraphs to continue a single block quote.

so not

like this

instead

like this

formatting on lemmy is frankly bad, at least documentation of

I believe Lemmy removed your blank character?
At least, it doesn't seem to show up when I try to select it or navigate around it with arrow keys, nor does the formatting look unusual.

It's usually possible to type Unicode characters by just inputting their codepoint/number. This kind of varies between desktop environments, but how it works for GNOME (and possibly others) is described here: https://help.ubuntu.com/stable/ubuntu-help/tips-specialchars.html.en#ctrlshiftu

Alternatively, you can also change your keyboard layout to include it. On X11, you'd do that with Xmodmap. Looks like there are some alternatives for Wayland, but I don't know what to recommend there.

Well, and another option would be to write a script which copies that character to your clipboard and then create a keyboard shortcut to call that script.
For copying to the clipboard, you can use xclip on X11 and wl-clipboard on Wayland.

Is a blank character different from pressing the spacebar?

Yes, but it mostly depends how it's interpreted by a given program. Some will interpret it as a character being there, but it may take up no space on the screen, for example. Some will show a space, but won't count it as a space character so it can bypass some text restrictions. Some may show different spacing. Many will also simply not accept them as valid characters.

I'm pretty sure that two end lines will give you the space on lemmy.

Like on Reddit

FYI you can "separate lines" by simply adding two newlines by pressing Return twice.

Like this.

My go-to would be AutoHotKey on Windows. Maybe this Linux version would work? https://github.com/phil294/AHK_X11

Looks like you can get a script that replaces

; hotstrings - expand 'btw' to 'By the way' as you type
::btw::By the way
; hotkeys - press winkey-z to go to Google
#z::Run http://google.com

You might be able to use whatever character you're using instead of {Space}:

F19::{Space}