On 16/04/2008, S & H Manterys <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Thank you kindly for the reply, and please bear with me, > > I did find & understand the instructions for use of non-English "spelling" > i Open Office - BUT, now I see that my original query would have been > clearer had I used the terms "symbols" & "special characters" > > My specific question relates to assigning shortcut keys to insert "Latin > Extended-A Polish letters directly from the keyboard in only one step, to > avoid the cumbersome process of, for each letter, taking 4 steps by > selecting "Insert", then "special characters", then choosing the character > with the mouse, then input it in the document. > > For comparison, Microsoft Word, in its Insert menu, in addition to > "Special characters" (of the like you have in OpenOffice) has a "Symbols" > (non-english letters, distinguished there from "Special Characters") option, > allowing for the chosen letter to be "assigned" a key combination, eg. > Alt+character from the standard "qwerty" keyboard (this method allows me > uninterupted flow when typing in a non-english language). Can I achieve > similar in OpenOffice? I did try to find it in OpenOffice, but perhaps I am > missing something obvious . > > Hope this makes sense. > Regards > Stan
Ah. Different. You can customise keys via the Tools>Customise>Keyboard menu but, unfortunately, OpenOffice does not allow the use of the Alt or Alt Gr key. There are various free tools available for entering non-English accented characters and ligatures. I use the Enhanced UK Keyboard at <http://www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/~ecl6tam/<http://www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/%7Eecl6tam/> >. It uses "dead" (normally unused) keys followed by "normal" ones to produce a variety of non-English characters. So for example, when turned on (by selecting it in the taskbar), an ampersand ("&") followed by an "a" produces the Scandinavian æ (ae) ligature and a percent sign ("%") followed by an "o" produces ǒ (an "o" with an inverted circumflex over it). There's a nice printable chart in the Help file that you can keep by your keyboard till you've learnt the combinations you need :-) . You'll need to check that it handles all the characters you need: download the .zip file and look at the .pdf file within it which contains the "nice printable chart". There's also the Quick Unicode Input Tool at http://www.cardbox.com/quick.htm which allows you to type the Alt key and the 3 or 4-digit number (on the numeric keypad) representing the Unicode value of the character you want. I've used this and it works but I find it less convenient than the Enhanced UK Keyboard. I think, though, that it has a wider coverage of characters and symbols. These both work in *any* Windows program. There's also http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/tools/msklc.mspx which allegedly lets you define your own keyboard layout. I've never used. It's also supposed to work in any Windows program ... Hope this helps. -- Harold Fuchs London, England Please reply *only* to [email protected]
