Use of Spanish accents in Libreoffice

users
#1

How do you type in accents, the tilda, or the two dots (umlaut in german)?

Arthur Luthold

#2

One method I use is to have more than one keyboard layout available.
Both Linux and Windows support this so that you can select the layout
you wish at any time. I have my system configured with U.S. English,
U.S. International and Greek layouts. I don't work in any other
language, but sometimes want the special characters that come with those
layouts.

#3

Unless you need to combine diacritics--the simplest way is to use the Special
Character button (with Capital Omega icon) on the main toolbar. The dialog
that opens will allow you to pick specific glyphs from the font in use--or
allow a convenient change to a different font that might have a better glyph
choice.

And for the 5.1.0 release, work on enhancement issue of tdf#73691 -- add
Unicode conversion shortcut like word (alt+x)
<https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=73691> will enable
toggle between Hex value and its Unicode glyph. So if you have specific
glyphs to use--they can be directly input.

#4

You can insert characters that don't occur on your keyboard in various ways.

o Go to Insert | Special Character... and scroll down to find the character.

o Once you have any accented character in your text, copy and paste it - or the word containing it, as necessary - where you need it again.

o Type a suitable code for what you need - perhaps #n for n-tilde or #u for u-umlaut. After you have completed typing, use Edit | Find & Replace... to replace your codes by the correct characters. This way, you don't have to use Insert | Special Character... more than once per accented character.

o Do something similar using AutoCorrect. There are built-in examples of this: blase is corrected to blasé, cliche to cliché, and so on. You could add your own: manana to mañana, funf (or fuenf) to fünf, and so on.

o Enter the material without accents, mark the relevant material as the appropriate languages, install spelling dictionaries for Spanish and German if necessary, and use a spelling check to massage your text into shape (checking carefully afterwards or as you go, of course).

o But this question is really one for your operating system (not LibreOffice), as this may have ways of interpreting keystroke combinations as accented characters. In Windows, for example, you can hold down the Alt key and type various four-digit codes on the numeric keypad to create accented characters. A quick web search should show you these codes.

o If you have a Spanish or German keyboard, you could use that. Even without such a keyboard, if you know where accents and accented characters would appear on it, you can teach your operating system to interpret what you are typing as if from such an alternative keyboard. In either case, you will need to install the additional keyboard type(s); you can then switch easily between these as you are typing.

I trust this helps.

Brian Barker