[Solved] Limited ability to set text language?

[Wild_Cat]

I have Russian installation of OOo. Default document language is set to Russian. But then when I start typing in English I can only select US English via context menu. Only when I specifically set GB English "for this document only", then I can use GB English, while I use only GB English for my translations - thus I was taught (doesn't make much difference to the rest of the world who speaks English but is not either GB or UK, anyway). I even have UK English set as my System English, although with US keyboard layout (was taught on US keyboard now strange behaviour of quotation marks in UK keyboard layout drives me nuts).

Is is somehow bound in Russian version or in OOo or how it is otherwise conditioned that I cannot select GB English but only US via context menu? If the default language in software as such is different (Russian in my case).

Also, do I miss something or there is no "free language choice" ? I mean, OOo does guess it more or less right, but when I start typing a literary text with phrases in other languages for which I don't have any spelling and don't really need one, and there may be a considerable amount of those - I'd usually prefer to set up whatever language they're in "by force". But I can't see a method.

For more, if I set paragraph language say French and then add a Russian word after direct speech, it does recognize as Russian words but can't cope 100% with typos, since it seems first I need to switch the language and then it would give me a suggestion. In which case I would also prefer to manually set the language on target words. So, is there a way?

Sure, typo could be corrected manually or phrases in other languages left underlined, it just doesn't feel NEAT.
So any help on this would be highly appreciated.

[Hagar Delest]

See here: [Tutorial] Spell check and Language configuration. You need to use styles.

The language detection is rather strange, it may be due to the algorithm used to guess the language. As English UK and US are very similar, I guess there is a priority given to one of them.

In 2.4 there will be a switch in the status bar to select the language directly. You can try a developer version on a mirror.

Thanks to add '[Solved]' in your first post title (edit button) if your issue has been fixed.

[Wild_Cat]

Thank you for the link. It gives pretty much useful information but requires too much work if you need to switch a lot between languages (set up different styles? or even templates for each language? what about bi-tri-lingual documents then?).

For one-language document I still believe the Default Language for current document is still the simplest to solve the type of English if it's English document.

But since first question was about GB/US English "rivalry" I just got a better idea (suitable for me I think but not very convenient overall may be): I could just turn off the US and other English dictionaries except the one orthography of which I use at all and see what happens!

Still the second question remains unclear to me:
Do I get it right that I cannot currently select ANY language (regardless of spell-check dico presence) in OOo?
And did I get it right that in 2.4 I will be able to do just that? And does in status bar mean for whole doc or for any selected text?
(Sorry I rather avoid development builds cause I've no time to afford dealing with possible issues)

(If you allow - before I believe this question solved, I do care for order and convenience - not to worry for me)

[Wild_Cat]

OK, now I read all the info at the above link and it seems there should be convenient possibilities for various languages and learned more about various levels of styles in OOo.

I also found the answer to my question - any language setting can be made in Font dialog.

Pity though that there is no separate command available as button to apply language to the text directly without going to Font (going to style semms somewhat too far for such quick needs). I hope the mentioned feature in 2.4 will serve as that (context depending, not just document language, this is easily done via options once, and this quick access feature needs to be more useful I hope).

But I can't seem to be able to get rid of US English when I pass to English in Russian paragraph... but I guess this is a question apart.

[Hagar Delest]

But I can't seem to be able to get rid of US English when I pass to English in Russian paragraph... but I guess this is a question apart.

Seems to be similar as that thread: faulty language selection.

[acknak]

I am no linguist--I can just barely follow UK English --so I should probably just keep my mouth shut, but this at least gave me a chance to play around with the new language control a little anyway. It sure seems like it will do everything you asked about, and conveniently as well.

A sample from the latest snapshot build:

The yellow sections are set to en_GB; the blue to French. The rest are en_US (default for me).

Note that the language of the text around the cursor is shown in the status bar. The status label is also a pop-up menu, giving easy access to the common language-change actions. If you have text selected, the setting will apply only to that text.

The languages used in the document are provided on the menu for quick access. Choosing "More" from the menu will open the character formatting dialog, on the "Font" tab, where you can choose from any available language.

I used direct formatting for this--quick and easy. If I were doing something serious, I would set up some styles that carried the language settings, and use them to assign languages and formatting appropriate for the context.

None of this is new functionality, only more convenient access to what Writer can already do.