"John Jason Jordan" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:20110207094303.5c27b23c@Devil8...
On Mon, 7 Feb 2011 10:32:54 -0000
"Harold Fuchs" <[email protected]> dijo:
"John Jason Jordan" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:20110206180124.35732718@Devil8...
OOo 3.2.1 from openoffice.org (not repositories) on Fedora 14 x86_64.
Under Tools > Language there are three choices:
For Selection
For Paragraph
For All Text
Regardless of which I select, the language options change. English is
always available, as are "None - Do not check spelling" and
"More ..."
Clicking on More... gets me the Language dialog box in Options, which
allow me to set the language of the User Interface, and of the Locale
Setting. I can also set the default language for documents. But there
seems to be no way to set optional dictionaries.
I have the English, Spanish and French dictionaries installed
in /opt/openoffice.org3/share/extension/install/.
Sometimes when I go into Tools > Language I get the option of English
(always) Spanish (sometimes), Portuguese (sometimes), never French,
and sometimes two or three of the above. There is no consistency.
And note that there is no Portuguese dictionary installed.
At the moment I am trying to write a document in Spanish and the
Spanish option does not appear. Closing and restarting OOo makes no
difference. The only way I can create a new document with the Spanish
language setting is to open a document that does have Spanish
language set (done once when Spanish appeared in the menu), save
under a new name, and delete all the text.
Something is seriously messed up with the language settings. Does
anyone have any idea what to look for?
If you go into Tools>Options>Language Settings>Languages, then in the
right hand pane is the "Default language for documents". The section
there labelled "Western" has a drop-done box containing a list of
languages. Take a look at that list. Many languages are shown. Some
have a little blue tick (check mark) superscripted to its left by
"ABC". The dictionary for a listed language is installed and
recognised on your system *if and only if* that tick/ABC is present
for the language in question.
In that dialog box "Spanish - Spain" is checked and it has the ABC in
front of it.
To write a document in Spanish, go to the above menu choice and select
Spanish from the drop-down list. When you have chosen Spanish from the
drop-down list check for the tick/ABC. If it's there OK; if not you
need to install the Spanish dictionary extension (I'd kill the
Quickstarter before installing the dictionary and then kill and
restart OOo Writer & Quickstarter afterwards but many on this list
would say that's unnecessary). Once the Spanish dictionary is selected
and *recognised*, choose "Only for this document". Spanish spell
checking should now work.
That does work, but apparently I have to go into Tools > Options every
time I want to create a document in Spanish.
If after all this you still have problems, come back here with more
details.
If I open a new text document Tools > Language still does not list
Spanish until I go into Tools > Options > Language Settings and select
Spanish just for the new document. This is a pain. I can't believe this
is by design. Whatever dictionaries are installed should appear in
Tools > Language for all documents all the time.
Under Tools>Langauge there are three options:
1. For all text. If you select this you get taken to the same place as if
you had chosen Tools>Options>Language Settings>Languages and we get into the
previous discussion about ticks and superscripted ABC's.
2 & 3 The other two options, For Selection (greyed out if no text is
selected) and For Paragraph work the same way:
If you click More (for more languages) you get taken to the pane you get
when you do Format>Character. This is because language is a property of
Character (don't ask, I don't understand either). On this pane click the
Font tab and, in the middle of the resulting panel you'll see Language. Here
you now have the same drop down list as before and the discussion applies
about ticks and superscripted ABC's. Choosing a language here affects the
current paragraph or selection depending on which option you chose.
Moreover, I have no Portuguese dictionaries installed, yet occasionally
Tools > Language shows Portuguese as an option.
But I'll bet there's no tick/superscripted ABC.
And sometimes Spanish
does appear as an option in Tools > Language, even without going into
Tools > Options > Language Settings.
Perhaps this depends on a "recent usage" scheme remembered by Writer ?????
I think there is something messed up, but I don't know where to look.
<snip>
Also, at the *bottom* of the Writer window in what I think is called the
Status Bar, are several boxes. Left to right on my system these are
1. An indication of which page I'm in within the document.
2. An indication of what I think is the current page style. Right clicking
on this allows you to select a new page style e.g. Landscape.
3. An indication of the current language. Clicking on this (left or right
click) brings up a list of interesting options. Among these is one that lets
you select the language for the current paragraph or selection :-) :-) .
IMHO this is a much more convenient way of handling multi-lingual documents.
4-n. Other things irrelevant to this discussion.
I think that part of the confusion here is that the list of languages is
*always* the same. It's in alphabetical order regardless of which
dictionaries you have installed. The "available" languages ("available" in
the sense that you have the dictionary installed and can therefore do spell
checking) are only indicated by the ticks/superscripted ABCs. I suppose
there's an argument for the "available" languages to be forced to the top of
the list but ...
--
Harold Fuchs
London, England
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