Spanish/French Accent Marks

users
#1

ubuntu 10.04
libreoffice 3.3.0

I'm trying to do spanish and french homework with libreoffice writer. I know
that I can insert special characters, but this is too slow and cumbersome.
In word I can use the ALT Key sequence such as ALT+0153 for TradeMark or
ALT+0169 for copyright. However, the numbers must be from the numeric keypad
and not from the row above QWERTY. Using these codes is faster than moving
the mouse around and clicking several times.

I've tried the same keystrokes with libreoffice writer and they don't work.

What are the keystrokes required to enter the universal keycode for any
special character such as Spanish and French accent marks?

#2

Hi,
You can find an extension at
h*p://extensions.services.openoffice.org/fr/project/ComposeSpecialCharacters
witch could be useful.
Best regards
JFL

#3

Hi,

Hi,
You can find an extension at
h*p://extensions.services.openoffice.org/fr/project/ComposeSpecialCharacters
witch could be useful.

See also (for details): "Compose Special Characters" on "ProductivityApps"
http://www.productivityapps.com/csc.html

My once created
"Overview Compose Special Characters – all key combos.odt", based on
CSC 1.2.9 [1]
is available on
"User community support forum for OpenOffice.org, StarOffice,
NeoOffice and LibreOffice":
[Solved] Shortcut to a special character
http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=20192#p93241
:wink:

[1] Release notes for Compose Special characters [Change log]
http://www.productivityapps.com/cscreleasenotes.html

mjk

#4

Another option is to let the spell check do its work. As long as you are aware of the spelling and the missing accented characters, then this may be the simplest solution.

Cheers

Marc

#5

Thanks for the help.

I installed the ComposeSpecialCharacter extension - no problems.

Although I have to admit it took me several attempts to set it up so that I
could get it work with this key combo:
A+`+shift+ctrl+z (5 keys).

However, it seems that the most frequently used accents are visible in the
table so it may be faster for me to just select the accent needed and press
insert.

As for the other option of letting the spell checker fix misspelled words,
well I'll try that another day. I think that I have currently have the
French dictionary installed but I can't be sure. It is listed in my
extensions so I would assume that it is installed and available. So when I
write my next paper I'll give this a try.

Thanks for your prompt replies.

#6

Folks,

I have been following this discussion perhaps it is time for my story.

I teach Hebrew and Greek in a Chinese language school and must prepare material for students in those languages. I use Openoffice and now Libreoffice exclusively. I used to insert the needed characters special characters.

It wasn't enough to have the fonts. I wanted to work within OO and LO and needed a way to key these into my documents directly.

I finally found some really decent fonts (SIL) and a splendid keyboarding program from Tavultesoft www.tavultesoft.com and . Now I can type these languages nearly as easily as English ... accents ... jots ... tittles ... breathing marks ... everything. Some folks in a Greek monastery provided a Tavultesoft keyboard that runs inside OO and LO.

Tavultesoft is proprietary, but it has answered my problems (Even Chinese!). Maybe it will do for you as well.

See also
Fonts for Scholars = http://scholarsfonts.net/
SIL Font catalogue = http://www.sil.org/computing/catalog/show_software_catalog.asp?by=cat&name=font
Classical Text Editor = http://www.oeaw.ac.at/kvk/cte/

#7

How hard would it be to use an on-screen keyboard? If you have a French keyboard showing on the screen, then you could use it to type in those letters that are not on the English physical keyboard. Do the same for Spanish. I use to know a language teacher that use to do that. She used an on-screen keyboard to type in all those letters that she did not have using the "cheap" USA keyboards the school used. Actually it is almost like using a keyboard on smart phones or some other keyboard-less handheld device, so you should be able to do that.

As for letting dictionaries solve the accent marks, that could be an easy solution. As long as you have French and/or Spanish ones set up for use. Tools>Language>For All Text --- should set up your dictionaries to use Spanish or French, if you installed them. If you did not, this link will lead you to many, many, dictionaries that you can install using the Extension Manager. http://libreoffice-na.us/English/extensions.html#dict

If you are using Spanish you may need to find out what version the teacher wants. Spain-Spanish or Mexico-Spanish. Each has their own dictionaries. There are also a few different French dictionaries as well.

#8

Folks,

I have been following this discussion perhaps it is time for my story.

I teach Hebrew and Greek in a Chinese language school and must prepare material for students in those languages. I use Openoffice and now Libreoffice exclusively. I used to insert the needed characters special characters.

It wasn't enough to have the fonts. I wanted to work within OO and LO and needed a way to key these into my documents directly.

I finally found some really decent fonts (SIL) and a splendid keyboarding program from Tavultesoft www.tavultesoft.com and . Now I can type these languages nearly as easily as English ... accents ... jots ... tittles ... breathing marks ... everything. Some folks in a Greek monastery provided a Tavultesoft keyboard that runs inside OO and LO.

Tavultesoft is proprietary, but it has answered my problems (Even Chinese!). Maybe it will do for you as well.

This link goes to a list of "Best Free" keyboards. Tavultesoft seems to be a paid product.

http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-onscreen-keyboard-osk.htm#Click-N-Type

I used MS's version for a computer that required a USB mouse and keyboard since it did not have PS/2 plugins. I did not have a USB keyboard, so I had to use the on-screen one till I got a USB adapter for the keyboard I had. Now I use a remote desktop viewer program to use that number-crunching computer so I do not need desk space for it.

So these on-screen keyboards do work. I have an old tablet PC that defaults to a mixed English and Japanese keyboard layout, for whatever reason, but they do work when you need to use a different keyboard layout than English.

#9

This is generally an operating system issue. The operating system (and
the graphical environment) should provide the means to type in
different scripts. Libreoffice extensions or autocorrect features are
workarounds.

If you use Linux, you can select a keyboard layout that supports all
sort of typing Latin characters.
For example, the default Great Britain keyboard layout allows to write
any Latin language (includes all European scripts), and also
characters such as ṩšṧ and so on.
If you also enable the Compose sequences, you can also type ©™①②€, etc.

If you want Greek, you can install the default Greek keyboard layout,
and you can type characters such as ᾅᾀΰϡϠϲϹϟϞϻϺʹ͵
(read more at http://simos.info/blog/archives/888 )

In GTK+ applications you can also type arbitrary Unicode characters with
Ctrl+Shift+u unihex. For example, Ctrl+Shift+u 7877 = 硷 or
Ctrl+Shift+u 2b1b = :black_large_square:

Simos

#10

That's a bit unwieldy, I suggest you bind a key sequence to the option
to insert a unicode character by the hex code. To do this select:
Tools -> Customise -> Keyboard.

In the Category box scroll down to LibreOffice Macros and expand the
subgroups to: user -> ComposeSpecialChars -> modUnicodeKeyhandler.

In the Function box select: InsertUnicodeCharacter and click Modify to
bind the selected key sequence (Ctrl+Shift+U is very popular).

This will let you use the hex codes from the UTF-8 spec to enter the
characters you're after.

Regards,
Ben