> > On 6 February 2015 at 10:11, Gary Collins <[email protected]> wrote: >> Hi, > I've been having some trouble lately using in Writer especially when using > alternative keyboard mappings (Windows 7). Yesterday, for example, I was > using a mapping that was basically English but which included macron vowels > (that's vowels with a bar over the top, used, e.g., to indicate a long vowel > in works of reference for Latin). I found that the assigned key combination - > in this case, AltGr+vowel - was giving me a vowel with something like an > acute accent over it instead of a bar - though the key combination was > working OK in other applications, e.g. WordPad and even the humble NotePad.It > did start to work, however; but in order to get it to do so, I had to set the > keyboard in the language bar whilst the LO document was active. Is this the > expected behaviour? Should LO override the locale settings in cases like > this? (wondering). >
When you type characters with diacritics, you can get either a "precomposed character" or a "character with diacritics". It depends on the keyboard layout that is active at the moment. For Windows and the default Latin/Greek keyboard layouts, you get precomposed characters. These are single Unicode characters that show the letter with any accents/diacritics drawn on it. They look really well, because the font designer had to draw them with the diacritics on top. The Unicode standard stopped accepting those precomposed characters into the standard about 15 years ago because you had to have all combinations of letters with accents into the standard. The keyboard layouts for Latin and Greek produce precomposed characters. For some exotic Latin scripts, there are no precomposed characters, so they use diacritics. ALPHA with TONOS: ά (precomposed, it's a single character) ALPHA with TONOS: ά (with diacritic, it's actually two characters!) I have an impression you are hitting some issue with the above two different ways to represent characters with accents/diacritics. >> Again, whilst using the polytonic Greek keyboard, I have noticed that from >> time to time the key combinations required to obtain some of the special >> characters "stop working" - that is, the key presses appear to be detected, >> but they stop having the desired effect. An example: to obtain an alpha with >> a rough breathing, acute accent and iota subscript, I would have to first >> press the combination <altGr + shift + '/'>, release those keys, and then >> press 'a' (for alpha). It's the <altGr + shift> combination that stops >> working here; when I press 'a' I get an alpha alright, but without the >> special diacritics (I think that's the right word).Using a combination >> without <shift> and/or <altGr> still works; e.g. I can press (and release) >> '/' and then press 'a' and get an alpha with smooth breathing and acute, >> which is the expected behaviour. > When you press AltGr+Shift+/, you are instructing the operating system that you are typing a "dead key"; nothing appears on the screen but if the next character is a certain one defined in the keyboard layout, then you will get that letter with the desired accent(s). "I would have to first press the combination <altGr + shift + '/'>, release those keys, and then press 'a' (for alpha)" is indeed the proper way to hit the dead key, and then hit the letter. If you do not hit the appropriate letter, then the dead key is dropped/cancelled so that you can continue typing. In Windows you can type up to one dead key and then a letter. >> I've no idea why this sometimes goes awry; the focus does not leave the >> document in question, and I haven't noticed a consistent combination of >> keystrokes/actions preceding the cessation of functionality. Similarly, I >> haven't found a consistent way to restore it - I can generally do so, >> eventually, but it seems to require different steps each time; such steps >> might include changing the keyboard from polytonic Greek to English and back >> again, using the language button on the desktop toolbar and/or using my >> assigned key combinations (in case these are significant, I use <ctrl + alt >> + 1> to change to the polytonic Greek and <ctrl + alt + 0> to change to the >> English layout; <Left Alt + Shift> changes between languages (default)); >> clicking an empty area of the desktop to lose the focus from Writer; giving >> the focus to a different document; and so on. > >> Any idea what I might be doing to cause LO Writer to go awry (prevention is >> better than cure)? Or the reason why it might be going wrong? Or if there >> is, in fact, a consistent way to restore it (but I just haven't found it >> yet)? > LO Writer should work without issues. I use it on Ubuntu and I could not get such a problem. One cause could be the keyboard layout in Windows sending (sometimes?) diacritic characters. You may mistype some of the dead keys, and they produce diacritics into the document. Sounds improbable, but it's the only thing I have in mind. If you can export a sample paragraph into plaintext file (.txt), it's possible to have a look into a hex editor. There should be code in LO Writer that deals with dead keys. It's possible that you have found a sequence of keys that confuse LO Writer on Windows. Simos >> Any helpful info gratefully received! >> /Gary > > > -- > To unsubscribe e-mail to: [email protected] > Problems? > http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ > Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette > List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ > All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: [email protected] Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
