[Solved] Unicode support

[anthrakeus]

I was trying to insert a non-ASCII character (accented æ) in Writer, but instead got ý. I entered the character code in decimal (hexadecimal didn't work at all). How do I enter non-ASCII characters without using the Insert Special Character dialog?

[acknak]

Have you read the Forum Survival Guide?

The answer depends on what system you're using and what version of OOo you have, which you have not told us.

[anthrakeus]

System: Windows XP
OOo Version: 2.3.1

[anthrakeus]

I doubt there's any keyboard available with this character (I'm typing Medieval Latin; no modern language I know of uses an accented a+e ligature). The macro idea will work for this particular problem, but I was hoping someone would know if OOo supports Unicode at all, and if it does how to set it up to do so. It's a possibility that it only supports Unicode entered in hexadecimal (I was trying decimal). I wasn't able to set Windows up to accept hexadecimal character codes, but that's obviously beyond the scope of this forum.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Of course OpenOffice supports Unicode. However, it does not support keyboard input via Alter + Decimal codepoint (beyond Alter 0255).

Macros are fine. If you prefer a system-wide method, then make your own keyboard with Microsoft's free Keyboard Layout Creator, as suggested in the above tutorial.

Opera browser can convert hex to unicode. 01FC 01FD Ǽ ǽ

[anthrakeus]

Thank you. I guess a new keyboard layout is what I'll have to do. I was hoping there was an easier way. Oh well.

Problem solved.

[acknak]

OOo on Linux supports entering Unicode characters by their (hex) codes. I've learned about a half-dozen of the common ones.

I also often use the system character map utility rather than the OOo Insert > Special character dialog, because the system utility does not block my work in OOo, and I can simply drag characters from the map into Writer, or click on characters to assemble a string in the map and then copy/paste that into Writer.

I don't remember if the same trick works in Windows or not, but I expect it would.

Obviously none of that is as convenient as a real keyboard layout, but it does well enough for some uses and avoids the need for a custom keyboard map.