Tristan Meares wrote:
> I am using version 2.3 of OpenOffice.org. (and have upgraded several
times) My problem relates to keyboard shortcuts in the word-processing
package.
>
> The specific nature of the problem is this: when typing, I may
frequently (depending on the nature of the document) to add accents to
letters: Graves, Acutes, Circumflexes, Umlauts (=diereses).
>
> If I were using MS-Office, in order to add an UMLAUT to the vowel o,
I would have programmed the Keyboard Shortcut 'CTRL'+':', 'o'
>
> This would give me: ö.
>
> Or 'CTRL'+ ':', 'SHIFT'+'o' for the capitalised Ö
>
> Thus, I would use CTRL+' for an acute accent, CTRL +` for a grave,
CTRL+^ for a circumflex, &c.
>
>
> The problem is that your suite does not seem to permit the multiple
instruction necessary for such shortcuts.
>
See the instruction manual on special characters at
http://documentation.openoffice.org/HOW_TO/various_topics/Howto_special_char.pdf
. (Note, on some computers and some browsers this won’t download, and
the error message claims the file is broken. If this happens to you, try
another browser.) You will see that you *can* assign particular keys to
special characters.
Rather than do that, however, I think working at the input level makes
more sense. You can download the free open source program AllChars from
http://allchars.zwolnet.com/ . I’ve been using this myself for over ten
years. It will *only* give you access to characters that exist in your
Windows character set (not to all of Unicode), but that includes *all*
the characters you have mentioned at once in every program under
Windows, not just one particular word processor. It is also easily
reprogrammable.
> Now I know that in the absence of any programming knowledge myself,
nor a desire to stump up money for MS-Office, I can always change my
Computer Keyboard Language to GERMAN for umlauts, and FRENCH for most
graves, acutes, circumflexes. But you will grant that it is somewhat
inconvenient to do this.
This is another answer: to download another keyboard driver, for example
the US International Keyboard has German *and* French characters on it
so you don’t have to switch keyboards while typing.
Perhaps a better answer to is edit your keyboard. Microsoft provides a
keyboard editor at http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/tools/msklc.mspx
at no additional cost over what you already paid for your system. Give
yourself an AltGr key and assign characters as you please. I’ve done
this myself also.
I’m mentioning all this because I’ve seen no hints anywhere that the
OpenOffice.org developers are concerned with this character issue. I
don’t know any more about it than you do, but I suspect their philosophy
is that they will program Writer to handle any character that it is
given, but how it gets to Writer is outside their concern. It is the
concern of the operating system (or of other utilities concerned with
keyboard editing).
Personally, I gave up long ago attempting to cater to various programs
that gave me different ways to obtain characters not available easily
from my keyboard, in which it was often impossible to program something
like ö to be called by the same key or combination of keys in every program.
It is more structured to use keyboard utilities that work the same with
every program. If I want to use, say a lot of Hebrew characters for some
purpose, it is easier to program a new keyboard that contains a Hebrew
character set along with the Latin set in the order than I want it
rather than to attempt to program a particular Word Processor to use
these characters.
> So I am asking you whether it is something which you have thought to
update with your next version of OpenOffice.
See http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=4579 . This is a
very long-standing issue. I expect one reason why nothing has been done
is because most people to whom it is an issue soon discover Allchars or
the Microsoft Keyboard Layout editor which solves the difficulty better
than MS Word’s assignment ability.
However right now you can program menus in Writer to provide diacritics.
Create a menu for diacritics, and submenus for acute, grave, circumflex,
dieresis, zedilla and so forth, and under each submenu a further set of
submenus for a e i o u and so forth and a submenu for Upper A E I O U
and so forth. Assigning shortcut keys allows you to access these
quickly. For example, in a system I once set up to test whether it would
work, I was able to access
something like Ç by entering ALT-D, Z for zedilla, U for upper, C for
the character.
> I am aware that you have now released version 2.4, which I will
download as soon as my troublesome internet connection permits. Perhaps
an updated array of keyboard shortcuts will be something to look forward
to with the release of version 2.5??
Probably not, I’m afraid. So do try some of these other methods which
other people are using now
As you appear not to be subscribed to this forum, I am sending a copy of
this post directly to you. If you have any responses or further
questions, please send them directly to [EMAIL PROTECTED], not to my
own email address.
Jim Allan
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