Re: French

Dear Suzie:

There are many methods of using non-keyboard characters from many languages.

Each method has its own unique pros and cons. No one method is enough.

The benefits are eternally in the details, so be patience-prepared to learn.

The simplest in one way is to go Insert (top 3rd from left), then 
"special character". You will see an icon there that looks a bit like a 
square with circles at the 4 corners.

This symbol comes from the Mac world where it is a keyboard key used to 
exercise control on something. On a PC it can sometimes give a clue as 
to what is behind it.

When you open this, you have a special window that displays all the 
characters from the font in current use. It also has a selection field 
where you can first change the current font if needed. The list of 
available fonts changes ongoing, especially if you obtain new fonts from 
any new software added to the overall system, or if you add added 
language support more than spellcheckers, thesauruses and dictionaries.

A faster way that works in Writer, but not in Calc is as follows:

1)    Hold down the [alt] key with your left hand

2)     With your right hand on the numeric keypad, type the 3 digit 
number that corresponds to the ASCII value of the special character you 
need.

3)    When you then release the [alt] key, the character appears at the 
current position of the text cursor. This also works in may email 
compose windows and online webmail and other applications, but not all.

Some database applications, especially those online that handle name, 
address and like information will totally refuse all characters that do 
not fall in the original 128 characters of non-enhanced ASCII. i.e. 
American English only.

Another option in Windows XP is to use the clipboard viewer to capture 
and save these characters each as a small .CLP file.

The Clipboard viewer can then load these later and paste them into many 
applications.

The clipboard viewer is a hidden part of Windows XP, but it can easily 
be revealed.

Search the boot drive for "clip" or "CLP" and look for the .EXE file 
which will have an icon that resembles a clipboard.

Then right-click, and drag this to the desktop.

When you then release the right mouse button, you will get a menu. If it 
allows you, create a shortcut there, if not use "copy here" because you 
may already have chosen a specialized shortcut.

In either case you will end up with a shortcut that can be used to load 
the viewer. I also put a copy of the shortcut in the startup file, then 
change the properties of THAT shortcut to open minimized.

When the machine is subsequently rebooted (restarted) that shortcut 
should be sitting automatically in the tray where it is convenient for 
immediate use at any moment.

This does not apply to Vista, Win 7 or any subsequent version of 
Windows, as that application has been changed to"Snippets" which is 
quite different and more graphic oriented.

In Linux (Based on the Fedora distribution (or flavor), I would suggest 
pasting these characters into a gedit text file in gnote.

Gnote is a simple notebook that installs by default and uses Gedit 
("Gnome Edit"), a simple text editor to create basic text notes and read 
basic text files, like notepad in Windows.

Now you have a bit of the conTEXT!!

Bruce M.


On 11/14/2011 7:50 PM, SUZY SHEPHERD wrote:
> Hi,
> All I would like to know is how to add French accents in Open Office 
> text documents.
> Thanks,
> Susie

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