A common approach to the symbols problem is to allow the user to press and hold the ALT key then enter the ASCII code on the keypad, when the ALT key is released the ASCII character is inserted.
Alternatively keyboards can be used as with the Chinese character sets. Though a Chinese character looks like a complicated `picture', when typing Chinese, there is no need for a keyboard with a complicated set of keys. In fact, a basic Chinese keyboard is mapped to only 24 keys (i.e. all the alphabet keys except `X' and `Z') of a standard US keyboard. Each of these keys represents a Chinese character These 24 keys are futher sub-divided into 72 supplementary word shapes. (Giving 1728 characters). Note that though some of these word shapes are identical to some standard Chinese radicals, they are not considered as Chinese radicals. The layout of a Chinese keyboard is shown in Figure 1. http://www.fi.muni.cz/usr/wong/teaching/chinese/notes/img2.png Figure 1: The layout of a Chinese keyboard The rule of thumb to typing Chinese is to memorize all the 24+72 (i.e. 96) `shapes'. While typing Chinese, it is important to identify which of these shapes are applicable to the desired Chinese character. Regards Carl Hinton -----Original Message----- From: Shravan Narayen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 19 January 2006 01:26 To: discuss@openoffice.org Subject: [discuss] Suggestions for Symbols An idea is to make the symbols page a little easier to use. Some ideas include letting the user assign shortcuts to different symbols. That would really help those in school taking different languages, by allowing them to insert commonly used letters that have accents. Otherwise, the user has to go up to insert, press symbols, and find the one that he/she wants every single time, and that can get frustrating. Another idea is for there to be more languages to choose from for the document. As of now Spanish and French, most likely to two most commonly learned language in schools are not present for the spell checker. People want to use OpenOffice instead of Word, but you don't want to force them to start using Word again because of these errors; try to improve these things in the next version of OpenOffice or in a patch and you will satisfy a lot of people. Thank You. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Legal Disclaimer:- Internet communications are not secure and therefore the Barclays Group does not accept legal responsibility for the contents of this message. Although the Barclays Group operates anti-virus programmes, it does not accept responsibility for any damage whatsoever that is caused by viruses being passed. Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the Barclays Group. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
