Re: how to input Eszett ('ß')?

[ken]

On 11/30/2011 08:04 PM Michael Heerdegen wrote:
> Hi,
>
> if you have to type a lot of German characters, you can use a German
> input method.  E.g. try
>
>   C-x RET C-\ german-prefix RET
>
> then you can use "a to get ä or "s for ß etc.
>
>
> - Michael.

Thanks, Michael.  Great thing.  But then how does one then return to the 
previous input method?

Note: when I do Mx- describe-input-method, the minibuffer prompt says

Describe input method (default, current choice):

If I then hit RET, I get Debugger telling me "No input method is 
activated now".

The buffer I'm doing this in (if it matters) is utf-8 encoded.  This 
emacs version is 21.4.1-- yes, old, but the latest distributed in 
RH/CentOS 5.7 (which is, yes, another issue... for another time), and 
AFAIK, uncustomized from that distribution.

tnx++,
ken