Special characters, for libreoffice, easy way to insert?

5 replies [Last post]
axgb
Offline
Joined: 09/22/2013

For school, I sometimes have to do french homeworks, which obviously involve accents. On libreoffice, doing this is a bore, as I have to press insert>Special symbol and find the one I want, which takes ages. On my friend's mac, he holds down the letter, and a little box appears asking him what symbol he wants. And on OpenTeacher, there is a little box on the side with all the useful symbols only. Is there a feature for this sort of thing in Libreoffice, or does anyone know of a plugin which does the same thing?

Magic Banana

I am a member!

I am a translator!

Offline
Joined: 07/24/2010

You should add (a "+" button) an "international" (search for this word) version of your keyboard layout (see the "layout" tab of the eponymous utility, in the "System Settings"). There is a "UK international" and a "USA international".

You then need to learn where to find the accents in the layout. They are to be typed before the accentuated letter. You can look at the keyboard layout from the utility.

onpon4
Offline
Joined: 05/30/2012

U.S. International with dead keys is what I would use (I've used it before on other systems, it's great), but I'm confused: the way dead keys are supposed to work is nothing shows up until the next key is pressed, which determines what is typed: if the next key is space, the accent shows up by itself; and if the next key is a letter the accent can be used with, the appropriate accented character shows up. But the way it's behaving on my system is the keys just don't do anything at all. If I press " and then o, I should get ö, but instead I just get o. Similarly, if I type ' and then e I should get é, but I just get e. All the keys seem to be able to do is print their normal U.S. layout counterparts if AltGr is held down.

axgb
Offline
Joined: 09/22/2013

I cannot find a layout tab in the system settings.

I am using Trisquel Mini 6.0 (if knowing that is any help)

ivaylo
Offline
Joined: 07/26/2010

В 20:52 +0100 на 09.03.2014 (нд), arielxgbarton[@nospam] написа:
> For school, I sometimes have to do french homeworks, which obviously involve
> accents. [...] Is there a feature for this sort of thing
> in Libreoffice, or does anyone know of a plugin which does the same thing?

GNOME and Xorg have support for such things. You have to set keys for
third and fifth level. These keys while held give access to additional
characters available on some keyboards. In many cases those are
accents.

Go to System settings (gnome-control-center) and choose Keyboard Layout.
On the Layout tabs, there is a Options button. What you need is located
in "Key to choose 3rd layout" and "Key to choose 5th layout". The
accents should be visible on your physical keyboard, but you can use the
tiny keyboard on the Layouts tab to see where the accents are.

To insert accents with the keys for third and fifth lever, hold the key
for the desired level and then press the key with the accent. To add
more accents release all keys and repeat the procedure. That's it!

Magic Banana

I am a member!

I am a translator!

Offline
Joined: 07/24/2010

By the way, if you want to take a look at the layout by clicking on the applet (or whatever they call it nowadays) showing the current one (at least in GNOME Shell's panel but I believe with the default panel too), you need to have the "gkbd-capplet" package installed.