How to make system-wide shortcut to insert umlauts in Gnome?

Question

I have a US layout keyboard and frequently need to insert German Umlaut characters. While on Windows, I used to have an AutoIt script that would e.g. insert ö to the currently selected input control if I pressed Ctrl+Alt+o.

Now, how would you do something like that in Gnome (Linux Mint 12)?

Answer 1

In Gnome menu: System -> Preferences -> Keyboard. In Layout/Options, you can choose the "Compose Key Position" (I use right windows key, for instance). Once this compose key chosen, you can press compose-" o (compose and ", then o), et voilà, ö. It works for many others, such as compose-' e letter or compose-` e (french accents éè), or ²³⁴ (compose-^ number), etc. Hope that helps.