Home › Browse Extensions

Compose Special Characters

by ProductivityApps
(13 votes)
Compose special characters

Compose Special Characters lets you type two or three characters and use a keyboard shortcut to convert them into a single accented or special character. Writer and Calc are currently supported.

You can also use a dialog to insert any supported character. The dialog lists all supported characters and the character combinations you use to compose them. The characters are categorised in the dialog for easier reference.

Once you know the character combination you need for any particular character you don't need to use the dialog if you assign a shortcut key to the Compose function. You can then type the character combination and press your shortcut to get your composed character as you type. See below for more how-to-use instructions.

For exmple, if you assign Compose Special Characters to F6, and you want to type â, then you'd press a then ^ then F6: the a and ^ you typed will change to â.

To open the Compose Special Characters dialog choose Insert > Compose Character... in either Writer or Calc.

To assign a keyboard shortcut:

  1. open the Compose Special Characters dialog,
  2. click the Set shortcut button,
  3. choose the shortcut you'd like to use in the Set shortcut dialog (for example F2 or Alt+Shift+Q),
  4. then click OK to close the Set shortcut dialog.

(You can use that same procedure to unassign the shortcut using the "Clear shortcut" button, for instance if you make a mistake.)

Do not use the Compose Special Characters dialog to assign a particular special character (like é) to a keyboard shortcut. The extension only works with the built-in keystroke combinations listed in the Compose Special Characters dialog.

HOW TO USE

Install the extension then restart OO.
    Assign a keyboard shortcut (see above).
      If you don't know the composing characters for the special character you want to type, open the Compose Special Characters dialog and find them (once you've done this you don't have to do it ever again so long as you remember those composing characters!).
        For Text documents:
        Type the two composing characters and press your shortcut to get your special character.
          For Spreadsheet documents:
          Type a "flag" character plus the two composing characters, then your shortcut. A flag character is required in Calc because there doesn't seem to be any way for a program to identify where the insertion point is in an OpenOffice spreadsheet cell. Since you might want to insert a special character anywhere in a cell, not just as the last character, the flag character is necessary.
          You can choose your own flag character in the Compose Special Character dialog. Remember, whatever flag character you choose, it should be one that you're not going to use in a formula or a value.

            After installing the extension you'll need to close OpenOffice then re-open it to see the new Compose Characters... menu item on the Insert menu.

              Release notes:
              http://www.productivityapps.com/cscreleasenotes.html

              Download extension
              Operating System: System Independent
              Compatible with: OpenOffice.org 2.3 | StarOffice 8 Update 8 or higher.
              Official release: 1.2.12
              Date: 2009-Sep-18
              Size: 37.5 KB
              View all releases
              License: opensource
              Further product information: Product details
              Provider: ProductivityApps
              Report abuse here | Contact extension owner
              • 47035 downloads initiated
              • 235 downloads this week

              Comments

              Sun, 09/06/2009 - 10:54 — proapps

              Fixing errors after updating to OO 3.x

              If you see error messages after updating to OO 3.0.1 or 3.1, please uninstall the extension and reinstall it. Something about the OO updater causes problems for some extensions that are already installed. Uninstalling and reinstalling the extension solves the problem.

              Sat, 04/25/2009 - 09:47 — proapps

              Yes, it works with OO 3.0

              Compose Special Characters works fine with OO 3.0.

              Wed, 03/18/2009 - 18:27 — douglasfcalvert

              What does this do that auto-correct does not do?

              I do not mean to be rude but it seems this can already be accomplished with autocorrect?

              Wed, 03/18/2009 - 21:26 — proapps

              AutoCorrect has its limitations

              It's a good question. AutoCorrect has its place but it also has limitations:

              1. AutoCorrect doesn't seem to work in the middle or at the end of a word. For example if you've defined e' to be replaced with é in the AutoCorrect replacement table and you're trying to type Société, when you type Socie' and press F3 to fire AutoCorrect, nothing happens except you get a space after the e' (at least in OO2.4).
              2. Even if AutoCorrect worked the way you want whenever you pressed F3, you have to add your own compose combinations to the AutoCorrect replacement table. That's not necessarily a disadvantage, but if you have a lot of characters to add to the replacement table that could be an annoyance. And it's a waste of time for thousands of people to do that if they can just download an extension and have it done for them.

              Of course if AutoCorrect suits you, by all means use it.

              Sun, 03/15/2009 - 16:55 — CCraig

              Can't get it to work

              I've gone through the process to assign to write "o" with a macron over it, but it will not work at all. When I hit the keys in swriter, the message comes back that whatever character precedes the place where I attempted to type "is not defined as an accented character". This is after the "compose special characters" process has assured me that the shortcut keys I assigned were completed successfully. This extension would make my life much easier, and without a way to shortcut macron vowels, I am afraid that I may have to go back to a commercial processor. Please help!

              Sun, 03/15/2009 - 18:20 — proapps

              Try again?

              You need to type either "o-" (for ō) or "O-" (for Ō) then press the keyboard shortcut you assigned to Compose Special Characters. I've retested those combinations and they work. Those character combinations ("o-" and "O-") are listed in the Compose Special Characters dialog in the "o" section.

              It sounds like you assigned the extension to shortcut keys (Alt+o?) - which is good. Have you typed "o-" then pressed your shortcut keys?

              You can't use the extension to assign a keyboard shortcut (like Alt+o) to a specific special character, that's not the way it works. It's designed to let people compose lots of different characters by typing two composing characters then using the shortcut key(s) they assign to combine the two characters they typed into one special character.

              The characters you need to type for different characters are listed in the Compose Special Characters dialog (Insert > Compose Character...).

              Sun, 03/15/2009 - 22:02 — CCraig

              Thanks for the very quick reply

              That works fine. I misunderstood how the extension works. This still makes it a bit faster than using the insert option.

              Do you know if there are any other options in swriter to assign a keyboard shortcut to a special character? I really miss the convenience of being able to set my own one-stroke shortcut.

              Thanks very much for your help and your extension!

              Sun, 03/15/2009 - 23:02 — proapps

              You're welcome!

              Glad to help. The only way I can think of to assign a shortcut to a special character is if you record your own macro and assign that to a keyboard shortcut. That works just fine if you've got a small number of special characters that you use over and over. But there's only a limited number of keyboard shortcuts you can assign in OO (unfortunately) so you're limited in how many of those macros you could set up...

              Fri, 03/06/2009 - 08:48 — proapps

              Feedback

              The best way to request additional characters, submit feature requests, or give feedback is to contact feedback@productivityapps.com. I'm happy to help - doing so by email can be easier in case there are any questions...

              Fri, 03/06/2009 - 03:50 — ddelma

              More characters

              I find this extension very useful but I am missing some essential characters. Is there any way to write a tilde e: ẽ, tilde iota: ῖ and this one: υ with your extension?
              I can find those characters in special characters then extended Greek and extended Latin.

              Sat, 03/07/2009 - 17:45 — proapps

              Happy to help

              Upper and lower case i with tilde and upper and lower case upsilon characters were both already in the extension. I've added the upper and lower case e with tilde to version 1.2.9 (out now).

              The extension doesn't include every character in the OO Special Characters dialog for performance reasons - the aim is to include the characters that people use on a regular basis. Characters are added as people request them.

              I've emailed you with a question about the last character you mentioned.

              Mon, 01/05/2009 - 22:15 — richard_n413

              Accentuate

              What's the difference between this extention and 'Accentuate'. Which one is the better extension?

              Mon, 01/05/2009 - 22:53 — proapps

              Differences

              This extension:

              1. includes twice as many characters
              2. allows you to choose which shortcut key you want to use
              3. works in Writer and Calc
              4. lets you look up characters in a categorised list within Writer or Calc (Insert > Compose Character...) without having to open up a separate uncategorised document
              Sun, 11/30/2008 - 08:27 — agirgis

              Great tool for hanyu pinyin!

              I was wondering whether I should try to use the you3 method to indicate third tone, but this by far more aesthetically pleasing.

              However, I must say that the instructions could use a little help. That is
              1. Install
              2. Restart OOO
              3. Tools -> Customize... -> Keyboard Tab
              4. Select OpenOffice.org Macro + user + ComposeSpecialChars + ModCode
              5. Choose ComposeSpecialChar
              6. Choose keyboard combination
              7. Click modify button.

              It was not easy to find the ComposeSpecialChar!

              Cheers

              Sun, 11/30/2008 - 13:43 — proapps

              Instructions

              Glad you like it!

              I've made the instructions clearer. The original instructions said that you could use a button on the Compose Special Dialog to set the shortcut key - I've added more specific instructions for doing that. That's easier and more flexible than using the built in OO customise keyboard interface that you listed in your comment.

              Sun, 10/26/2008 - 10:02 — rgb

              Tau and Theta

              There is a problem with the new (and great!) Greek character shortcuts: tau and theta use the same \t shortcut. I think \q is better for theta

              Sun, 10/26/2008 - 12:53 — proapps

              Conflict resolved

              Thanks for letting me know!

              Theta is now \q and \Q, Tau remains \t and \T.

              Sun, 10/26/2008 - 13:55 — rgb

              Thanks to you!!!

              Thanks to YOU for your great (and quick!) work!!!

              Sat, 10/25/2008 - 20:50 — proapps

              Greek characters and bug fix

              Greek characters have been added - \a = alpha, \b = beta, \g = gamma and so on. See the Compose Special Characters dialog for details (Insert > Compose Character...).

              Also, a bug affecting inserting characters in Calc has been fixed.

              Thu, 09/11/2008 - 11:34 — Sebo

              customization

              I do like the idea of this extension! However, as I do often need shortcuts to the greek letters, I would like to be able to add my own character combinations. I did find the way to change the array in the macro itself, but unfortunately changes are overwritten on extension updates. Am I missing an obvious way of assigning my own special characters? Thanks again for this extension!

              Thu, 09/11/2008 - 19:01 — proapps

              Adding characters

              I'm thinking about how it might be possible for users to add their own character combinations. The issue is that the extension is written in OOBasic which is, well, pretty basic in its capabilities. I'm not sure it's doable so that the extension is still maintainable and performs quickly. It's definitely on the hope-to-do list. In the meantime I'll email you regarding the list of the characters you're talking about and suggested keystroke combinations for them, which I'll be happy to add them in to a future release. (To keep this thread readable, please don't post them here.)

              And thanks, glad you like the extension!

              Tue, 09/02/2008 - 15:16 — padmavyuha

              Extra characters, please!

              This is great - I'd love to see it extended to include the charaters with a dot underneath that are used in Devanagari transliteration, like ḍḥḷṃṇṛṣṭ (which probably won't come out on the web page!), but I suppose there's infinite room for expanding this. Perhaps there's scope for an expandable database of characters and their shortcuts that the extension could call from? Then they could also be grouped by accent as well as character. Meanwhile, this is really useful as it's the only quick way to produce characters with a macron, like ē. Thanks!

              Tue, 09/02/2008 - 22:11 — proapps

              Glad you like it!

              Glad you like it! Characters with dots underneath have been added in version 1.2.1. Also the key combinations for Ĉ and š have been fixed.

              Wed, 09/03/2008 - 06:40 — padmavyuha

              What a quick response...

              Thanks, that's great! A couple more requests:
              Is there any way for your extension to detect the platform it's running on, and display modifier keys accordingly? On a mac, the available modifiers are Shift and Cmd only. Using CSC on a mac the Set Keyboard Shortcut panel shows Alt/Alt Grey options which can't be used, and Ctl which should read Cmd (as that's the modifier that gets used if you check the Ctl box).
              I noticed that if I reassign the keyboard shortcut, the old one stays assigned to CSC too (unless I use the Clear Shortcut button first). Can CSC clear the last key assignment if the user changes to a new one? (Or to be really fancy, remember what it overwrote last time and restore the old assignment if there was one?)

              Wed, 09/03/2008 - 08:39 — proapps

              You're welcome

              CSC is written in OOBasic. Unfortunately I don't believe OOBasic is capable of detecting the user's OS/hardware, but I'll look into it. So for now, in the Assign Shortcut dialog, Mac users should use the Ctl checkbox for their Cmd key.

              You're correct, if you reassign the CSC macro to another keyboard shortcut using the CSC Assign Shortcut dialog, you need to unassign the previous shortcut. You can use the Clear Shortcut button for that. It's the same with OO's built in keyboard customisation feature - OO's customisation doesn't unassign keyboard shortcuts if you assign something to a new shortcut (unless you're overwriting a shortcut of course).

              Hope that helps...

              Thu, 08/28/2008 - 23:49 — Mise

              A HUGE time-saver!

              I second the "WOW" one user expressed. I do a significant amount of writing in Chinese pinyin. I was using "Insert" and "Special Character" then cutting and pasting. Very labor intensive! "Compose Special Characters" has been unbelievable in speeding up my pinyin entry. I cannot say enough good about it.

              Initially I had a small problem. The "flag" key, necessary when entering Special Characters in Calc (not necessary in Writer), did not appear on my U.S. keyboard. I sent email to the author Chuck Henrich explaining my problem. He could not have been more accommodating. He added the provision of a user-selected "flag" for use in Calc and all my problems were solved.

              If you need to use special characters, primarily non-English language marks, this is THE add-on you need and want!

              Tue, 07/29/2008 - 09:41 — rgb

              Wow!!

              Wonderful!
              I found a little problem with the "==" shortcut not working on version 1.0.94. This can be easily fixed by editing the "fncCharacterArray" macro. Just change the line
              arrChars(1,255) = "== "
              with
              arrChars(1,255) = "=="
              (that is, erase the extra space after the two equal signs)
              A typo, I suppose ;)

              Wed, 07/30/2008 - 09:29 — proapps

              Bug fixed

              Thanks for the kind words! Version 1.1.1 fixes that bug relating to shortcuts ending with "=".

              Sun, 07/13/2008 - 20:43 — proapps

              Dialog size

              I've had some reports of Ubuntu users experiencing problems with the size of the Compose Special Characters reference dialog in OO 2.4.x. Sometimes it appears full size, other times it appears just as the upper left hand corner of the full dialog. The problem affects a number of extensions, not just this one. It seems to be due to a combination of bugs in Ubuntu's graphics handling and their version of OO 2.4.x. For more detail see:

              http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=87596
              and
              http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=7716&p...

              The OO developers are working on a fix. In the meantime if you're a Ubuntu user and you're having problems with the size of extensions' dialog boxes you might want to change your graphics mode to "None" (in Ubuntu: System -> Preferences -> Appearance).

              Mon, 05/05/2008 - 09:26 — proapps

              Copyright symbol fixed

              Version 1.0.88 fixes a conflict with the copyright symbol so if you download a previous version please update to 1.0.88. Thanks and please get in touch if you find any bugs or have any suggestions, feedback is most welcome.

              Thu, 05/01/2008 - 14:41 — Mauzillo

              If you don't want to waste

              If you don't want to waste hours looking for special characters that you have to use night and day, then this extension is for you! A real top-notcher!