2008/7/19 dana d. k. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > > > Hello support team > Teaching on Internet and translating, I need to use several languages on > the same computer. > Mostly I work with Hebrew, Romanian, French, English and Turkish. > > 1 - Do I need to download separate programs? > 2 - Beside French extension and a whole Hebrew program could not find > anything else. > > Could you direct me what I need to do ? > > Thank you, > Dana >
There are three separate issues here: 1. The language in which menus, help text, error messages etc. is displayed. 2. The language(s) you use in your text and which you require to be correctly spell checked. 3. The entry of non English characters. 1. Menus etc. I'm going to ignore this issue as I assume you will always want your menus etc. in a single language. OpenOffice comes in several different languages. Choose one from < http://download.openoffice.org/other.html#en-US> or, for English (US variety) just click the Download button at <www.openoffice.org>. It is possible to install OpenOffice in such a way that different users are presented with different languages for menus etc. But I don't think that's what you want so I won't try to explain it. If I'm wrong, please just say so and I'll try. 2. Spell Checking. For spell checking you need to install all the relevant dictionaries via File>Wizards>Install New Dictionaries. There are now two separate sub-issues: a) Each document you create is in a single language but different documents are in different languages. This is achieved by setting the language in Tools>Options>Language Settings>Languages. Here you can set the "Default language for documents" and tick (check) the "For this document only" box. When you choose the language from the drop-down list it must have a blue tick (check mark) with a small-font "ABC" next to it. If it doesn't then the relevant dictionary is not installed and spell checking for that language will not be possible. b) Each document can consist of sections/paragraphs/sentences/words in different languages each of which must be correctl;y spell checked in its own language. The best way to achieve this is to create a set of "styles" for each language and then set the appropriate one as you enter text into your document. Styles can be saved in a template which you can set as the default so it gets used for each new document you create. Language is an attribute of Character which means you can have different words in different languages within the same sentence. More likely, though, is that you'll want to create Paragraph styles with the Font>Language attribute set appropriately. Give each style a memorable name so that you can easily select them from the drop down list in Writer's menu bar. For more information about styles see chapters 6 and 7 of the Writer Guide at < http://documentation.openoffice.org/manuals/oooauthors2/index.html>. Alternatively you can select a piece of text and choose its language from the list at the bottom of the screen. This is only available in the more recent versions of OpenOffice; I'm not sure of the earliest but it works in my 2.4.0. This method works well when a document is mostly in one language but with the odd piece in a different one. For really mixed documents the "styles" method is better although it takes longer to set up initially. 3. Entering non-English characters. This is complicated and I don't pretend to understand all the intricacies - or even most of them. Part of the problem is that some of the issues are dependent on the Operating System you are using. For example, there's a tool called SCIM (http://www.scim-im.org/) which lets you enter pretty much any charcaters you like from a US keybaord but it's not available for Windows. For Windows we have http://www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/~ecl6tam/ and http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/tools/msklc.mspx as the best methods I've come across so far. I use the first. These let you enter for example accented French characters, special Scandinavian vowels (which I need) and such like. I don't know how to use an English keyboard to enter Russian characters and I think things get more complicated when you start thinking about Hebrew and Arabic which are written right-to-left. OpenOffice has special facilities for this ("CTL" - Complex Text Language, I believe) but I couldn't explain them to to you. Hopefully someone else will, *PLEASE*. I also don't know how to mix left-to-right and right-to-left text. Again, *Help please*. Things get easier if you can change keyboards and also change the "Locale" setting within your Operating System. I believe OpenOffice will honour the Locale (Tools>Options>Language Settings>Languages>Locale Setting) but I've never played with this. Someone, *please*. HTH a little. -- Harold Fuchs London, England Please reply *only* to [email protected]
