Umlaut

I am looking for a way to type German Umlauts on my Linux Linpus system. Is there a simple key combination to access them? In Open Office you have the special character map - which is not exactly a convenient way when you type a lot of German text. But in evolution mail there is no character map.
On my other machine, which runs on Ubuntu I can access the keyboard layout and create a 'third level chooser' (I think it was called) and thus had a simple key combination to type German relatively easy.
Now the xfce settings of the standard linux that ships with the Aspire One does not seem to offer such access. Do I need to install an un-acerised version of xfce? If so, how would I do that?
I would however prefer a simpler way since the rest of it seems to run relatively smooth.
Thanks for your help.

 

On my machine, i could switch the keyboard-layout via the scim-program
It was a small little button in the right corner, but afaik, it is not always installed from the beginning (saw 2 machines without it). If its not present, just install it via the package manager.
The German keyboard-layout is mostly the same as the english (save the special-characters), except that the "y" and the "z" are switched. The "ü" is located on the right side of the "p"; "ö" and "ä" are right of the "L"

 

Does your keyboard contain the "^¨~"-button left from "Enter"?

You can use that to do umlauts by pressing it and then for example "a", which results in ä
That's what I use to do the german ü on my finnish keyboard, ä, ö and å naturally have their own buttons on this layout.

 

Alt-Gr is a useful key; on mine (English-UK layout) Alt-Gr and { together, followed by a, produce ä. Alt-Gr and other keys (such as :,@,~) produce various other accents.

Works in OpenOffice and Mousepad; I haven't installed Evolution so I don't know about that application.

 

Thanks. For me, on a UK keyboard the

Code:

AltGr plus {

followed by the o,a or u does the trick.
That should make life easier.