I discovered quite by chance (from http://en.wikipedia.org/Esszet) that I could generate an ß in Gnome 2.14 and earlier using control-shift-df (it changes to something else in 2.15 apparently). However I can find nothing in the gnome documentation about this, or about all the other characters I assume I could generate if I only knew how.
This feature should not only be documented in the help system, it should also be introduced to new users in tutorials. Perhaps it could, in addition, be mentioned in the documentation for the character pallette and/or for the keyboard preferences.
The same should apply to the equally obscure xorg compose key. I myself actually did find out a short while ago what the compose key did, but I didn't know, until reading that wikipedia article, that compose-ss would give me an ß. What I have managed to learn about compose key combinations has been mainly through guesswork. There are still many characters I would like to use that I haven't yet guessed. You shouldn't need to use guesswork to unearth important features of your desktop environment.
First sentence should read:
I discovered quite by chance (from http://