Input methods

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An input method is a way to use any data as input, for example to use a standard Latin keyboard for writing Chinese characters. Gentoo has several input method frameworks available:

fcitx — supporting multiple languages and IMEs, mostly for Simplified Chinese, but also other scripts
IBus — supporting multiple languages and IMEs
SCIM — supporting multiple languages and IMEs
app-i18n/uim — supporting multiple languages and IMEs

The gentoo-zh overlay includes some more packages (and not just for Chinese).

On GTK based applications, the key sequence for hexadecimal Unicode input is Ctrl+Shift+u+<hex digit>. As an example, the unicode character ✔ which has unicode number U+2714 can be written as Ctrl+Shift+u+2714+ENTER, being rendered as ✔.