Shortcuts for special characters

[zaveloff]

Is it possible to assign a shortcut key combination to a symbol/special character?

[jgd]

You can use an autotext.
Insert your special character in a document, select it. Then
Menu -> Edit -> AutoText
select My autotexts, choose a name and a shortcut. Click on the drop down menu AutoText, click on New and close the window AutoText.
When you want to insert the special character, you have to enter your shortcut and press F3.
Hope that helps.
Jacqueline

[zaveloff]

Thanks. That helps.

I noticed also that a quite a few special characters can be produced with the option key (or shift/option) + a letter or number. However, I have not been able to figure out any logical assignment. I also could night find anything in the NeoOffice Help that lists these. Is there a list somewhere?

[zaveloff]

One more thing. Is is possible to replace what is assigned to the key?

[yoxi]

i) The 'special characters inserted using the alt key' is a feature of OSX itself, not of NeoOffice - you can see which keys do what in any particular font in your language by going to (in English:) System Preferences, clicking on International, choosing the Input Menu tab and enabling Keyboard Viewer.
Then you'll get a new icon in your menubar with a flag on it - here you can call down a menu and click on Show Keyboard Viewer - then in the resulting keyboard layout display, try holding down the alt key, and then shift-alt to see the available options.
In the Input Menu mentioned above, you can also enable keyboard layouts for different languages, which you can then switch between using either the menubar item or a keyboard shortcut (usually cmd-spacebar) - that way, if there are particular accents or characters that are available in other languages than the one you're using, you have quick access to them through the keyboard (if you can remember the layout! otherwise use the Keyboard Viewer to remind yourself...)

ii) You can indeed edit which keys do what in your keyboard layout using a utility such as Ukelele, but it's a delicate business - always save your modified layout with a different name from the main system one you started with, so you can go back to the unmodified version if you mess something up.

An alternative way to assign a special character to a keystroke in NeoOffice is to record a macro while entering the special character from the Insert-Special Character menu item, and then assign that macro to a NeoOffice-available keystroke - I wrote a long spiel about how to do this in a thread somewhere but I can't find it! If you can't figure out how to do that from the Help, send me a PM nd I'll write it up again.

- padmavyuha

[sardisson]

[yoxi]

Tag team!

[jgd]

[sardisson]

[noob]

I've just switched from Word. In Word I remember holding ctrl then punching in 4 'digits' to produce the special characters. That doesn't work here? I have to use the keyboard viewer?? Then, what does the "U+xxxx" mean on the special characters window?

Thanks!

[sardisson]