[tlug] How to type macrons?

["Michael(tm) Smith" <smith@example.com>]

Can anybody provide guidance on how I can get my environment set
up such that I can type in characters with macrons (that is, Ä, Ä,
Å, Ä, Å)? -- that is, enter them from the keyboard (as opposed to
selecting them using GNOME Character Map or some such).

I'm using UIM for Japanese input. Is there a way to type roman
characters with macrons using UIM? Otherwise, is there a way I can
set up an alternate keyboard using setxkbmap or something?

Here are the details on my environment and the behavior I see:

My machine is a 13-inch MacBook with a Japanese keyboard, running
Linux as a VM (under Parallels). I have the keyboard "model" in my
environment set to jp106 (I've tried with it set to macintosh,
layout=jp, and that seems to work pretty much the same).

This keyboard has no AltGr key, nor any right Alt key, nor any
right Command key (it has instead -- in maybe what is that place
on an US English keyboard -- a key marked with ã that gives me a
backslash if I type it (unshifted) in rÅmaji mode, and an
underscore if I type it shifted.

I'm using KDE 3.5.7 and after reading some how-to stuff, I tried
going to Control Center/ Keyboard Layout and adding a U.S.
English keyboard with the layout set to "intl" (for International,
I guess -- what used to be called "U.S English with dead keys"). 

What that actually seems to do is run this:

  setxkbmap -model jp106 -layout us -variant intl

After that runs, I find I can now get, for example, an e acute (Ã)
by typing 'e, and à and à by prefixing ^ and ". But I still can't
find any way to type e (or anything else) with macron.

Some how-to docs I found say that in "-variant intl" mode, I
should be able to get an e macron by typing /e (or maybe it's \e)
or }e or something. But none of those work. I just get a normal
slash when I type a slash, and when I type the key on my Japanese
keyboard where the } character normally is (the ã key), and then
type e, I get... just a normal e. If it type } from where I guess
it thinks the key is on a US English keyboard, I just get a }.

Sorta pretty much the same if I try to type a backslash in that
mode: \e just gives me an e. (And I have no idea how I can get an
actual backslash in the mode, because if I type \+Space by itself
(which should be the way to type a literal backslash), I get
nothing at all.

So, I'm stumped.

  --Mike

P.S.  I thought, hey, maybe I can get it to work by setting
model=jp106+layout=jp+variant=intl, but the KDE Keyboard Layout
control panel doesn't give the option to do that, and if I try to
set it manually using the command below, it doesn't work...

  setxkbmap -model jp106 -layout jp -variant intl

P.P.S. I know how to type characters with macrons in other apps
that have their own special mechanisms for enabling it (for
example, using "digraph" in Vim, I can just type ^ke- to get an e
macron). But what I'm looking for is a way to enable it my desktop
environment so that I can type those characters even in apps that
don't have their own mechanisms for enabling it.

-- 
Michael(tm) Smith
http://people.w3.org/mike/
http://sideshowbarker.net/