Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 6847
provide a method to insert accented characters on English keybd
Last modified: 2017-02-23 08:56:26 UTC
There has been recent discussion of this and also of autoreplace. May I suggest enhancing autoreplace, or providing a similar mechanism (eg like *bold*), so that it does not depend on a trailing space or separator, and works for character groups instead of for whole words only. It would be helpful if standard replacements could be provided which users could change if they wanted. I would willingly submit a set (eg ``a to become a grave, ''a to become a acute, ^^a to become a circumflex ...)
Joost->Bernard: you could already do this using the autocorrection feature in /Tools/"AutoCorrect/AutoFormat" when you define it on the tabpage "Replace"
The auto-correction feature does NOT enable the insertion of accented characters by replacement. 1.0.1 allows such replacement if the group of characters to be replaced is a distict word (eg e'' can become e acute if the document contains "<space>e''<space>"), but cannot cope with the character group anywhere within or at the beginning or end of a word. This is obviously not satisfactory as a means of auto-correcting to acceted characters. In 643 even the replacment of the separate word doesn't work, at least in the Windows version. I haven't got 643C to try, I'm afraid; but unless there is a significant change there, the issue should be held open. Best wishes, Bernard Moreton
Reassigned to CJ.
Reassiged to Bettina.
I personally like the way Microsoft handles this. Their system is as follows: hold CTRL+the character most resembling the accent, then press the character to be accented. thus, for an acute e, you would pres CTRL+',e.
Created attachment 11426 [details] configuration enhancement for /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb/symbols/us
In Linux there _NORMALLY_ is a similar way to obtain such an ISO accent mode, which uses the right-WIN plus ', ", `, etc as dead keys to obtain accentuated characters (ie right-WIN+' e yields é), but this DOES NOT work in OpenOffice 1.1.0 (neither in StarOffice 6.x). Strangely enough, it worked in StarOffice 5.2. (See configuration file in attachment)
Some users reported that they want duplication of the functionality found in Windows. Essentially, it allows users to input accented characters without having to install a keymap, for Windows. It defines a set of custom dead keys to cover mostly western european languages. For documention on the full key bindings, see http://office.microsoft.com/assistance/hfws.aspx?AssetID=HP051865621033 Also see related Mozilla Bugzilla report https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=69230 OpenOffice.org (1.1.2) on Linux appears not support shortcuts (Ctrl-C) when the keyboard is switched to another language than English. I'll find a new report for this.
A more powerful approach to this issue is described in issue 67500. Indeed, such an *autoreplace* is a powerful way to automate various writing tasks. As described here (and in the issue 67500), the replacement list handles only full words, therefore this needs a workaround/ fix/ enhancement. A very useful consequence of this feature would be to solve (in one way) issue 4579. Suppose we add this to the replacement list: "a'" => "ä" Then "Gra'sser" becomes automatically "Grässer", NO need for special shortcuts. Of course, a complete solution would involve both this feature AND the shortcut version, BUT until shortcuts are implemented, this would be fine (and this would be useful even IF shortcuts were later implemented). How should this be implemented? 1. fast way: implement a second replacement list, where any occurrence of the specified combination would be replaced by the new string 2. more powerful: implement wildcards, as suggested for issue 67500
discoleo the facility you describe is not what I want. I need a method of writing café without either having to type (and remember!) ALT+0,2,2,3 or go to the special characters menu to insert e acute. The problem with using autocorrect is that it has side-effects - it tends to 'correct' stuff that wasn't wrong in the first place. In your example, for instance, <Amanda's> would be changed to <Amandäs> - not at all what I want. This is particularly a problem if you work on text from a variety of sources which may use different vocabularies.
discoleo -> redi2go This issue is about extending *autocorrect*, so, my point is still valid. While autocorrect may have sometimes undesired efects, there are situations where I definitely prefer the autocorrect feature: e.g. when I am writing text in 2+ languages with different types of accents, where ANY logical key-combination is insufficient to write ALL special characters. [I do write such texts on a regular basis.] Indeed, IF I do NOT write in English (think of all Latin-languages, Slavik ones, and so on), you won't encounter the <Amanda's> issue, so "a'" would be almost always a valid replacement (just NOT in English).
discoleo I don't want to get into a great argument about this. The summary says 'provide a method to insert accented characters on English keyboard'. I don't really care how it works, but would not consider a solution that had side-effects to be acceptable, because it's not necessary. My concern is that if the proposed solution is made too ambitious eg a wholesale rewrite of autoreplace, nothing will ever get done because nobody will take on such a big job without a huge number of votes, which it will never get. (For instance, I don't even use autoreplace, let alone want it enhancing.) We just need something here that is simple, quick, and friendly that will cover the 90% case. The rewrite of autoreplace can be tackled separately under your 67500 enhancement request.
I've added a comment and attachment to http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=4579 that resolves this problem, at least for me. Go there to read more.
Just to tidy this, there's a mildly updated version of the macro that resolves this issue on my site http://www.billhibbert.com. It covers most western european languages and several special characters as well.
To grep the issues easier via "requirements" I put the issues currently lying on my owner to the owner "requirements".
I would like to suggest another approach to this that is much more intuitive and quicker to use. When composing an email in Google mail, or a note in MS OneNote on my Macbook pro I can press and hold a key to get a popup of accented options for that character. For example, hold down the "e" key and 7 accented options appear in the popup. Select the one you want with the mouse and job done. This has a number of benefits: - no need to remember difficult keyboard combinations - no need to use the insert menu, which is slow and frustrating - no need to do search and replace Would it be possible to implement this approach in Open Office for both Mac and Windows users?
Is this feature only available in these Application? Maybe it is an OS feature. Therefore it should workin Open Office from Mac too. Could be done on other Platforms too, but for this the application Open Office has to override the default behaviour of the system. (Printing a lot of "e" when you hold the key :-D) Might be a problem for others.
Hmm, maybe this extentions helps? http://extensions.openoffice.org/de/project/compose-special-characters
(In reply to Peter from comment #17) > Is this feature only available in these Application? > > Maybe it is an OS feature. Therefore it should workin Open Office from Mac > too. > > Could be done on other Platforms too, but for this the application Open > Office has to override the default behaviour of the system. (Printing a lot > of "e" when you hold the key :-D) > > Might be a problem for others. Hi Peter those are the two applications I use the most, but I just checked the behaviour in Pages and that also presents the popup with the accented characters. If it was an OS feature shouldn't it also be working in Open Office on the Mac (which it doesn't)?
(In reply to Peter from comment #18) > Hmm, maybe this extentions helps? > http://extensions.openoffice.org/de/project/compose-special-characters Hi Peter I had a look at this extension, but it still requires different key combinations to achieve the correct accented character, which isn't optimum. The popup I have access to in other apps on the Mac is just so easy and elegant.