The Sixth Conversation Thread

[Khemehekis]

WordPerfect's a program I haven't heard of for a while

Yeah, but I never caught the hang of MS Word.

[Arayaz]

WordPerfect's a program I haven't heard of for a while

Yeah, but I never caught the hang of MS Word.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Google Docs is great.

[_Just_A_Sketch]

I love Google Docs since I work on several different devices and can't download anything on my school laptop. However, I really don't like Google for a myriad of reasons, so I'm looking for some sort of alternative.

[VaptuantaDoi]

LibreOffice is pretty good. I personally hate google docs (for no reason).

[Visions1]

I like Pages and Word. They each have features that I enjoy.
I find Pages is a lot easier to use, and by default looks really nice.
Conversely, Word has more flexibility. Still, I prefer pages.
I want to play around with Publisher for conlanging, since the ability to easily box everything up and make it brochure-like could be useful for things like making grammars easy to chart and read and for conwriting codicies.
I've tried using Excel to write tone sandhi. I'm a manager (kind of), but not for accounting, and my gosh Excel is a pain. (I have no idea how to use it.)
Docs is nice, but I have gripes. One of the main problems for me about online programs is that they need internet, and often accounts. What if you don't always have access to that, or just don't want that (I'm looking at you, Chromebook. Wallow in shame over my lack of patronage, suffer and cringe, oh vain corruptor, oh slave and serf and servant of a monster with a thousand hands and a myriad eyes, who trails every man in search of flesh, for whom you are happily its feeder...).

[_Just_A_Sketch]

I downloaded the portable version of LibreOffice. After messing about with the settings for a while I've gotten it to a state I'm happy with. I'll try it out over the next few weeks and maybe I'll end up sticking with it.

[VaptuantaDoi]

When I use LibreOffice, some of the features feel like they just made them different from how they work on word to avoid being sued. But overall I might even venture to say it's got a better interface than word.

[lsd]

for what reason, versions beyond libreoffice 5 do not allow my text2glyph to work correctly on my linux,
or I do not find the settings useful...
also I am still on libreoffice 5...

on my PC pro on Windows one of the last updates shifted the images of my text2glyph...
grrr...
the stability of the port and its backward compatibility sometimes seems mysterious...

[_Just_A_Sketch]

I started writing a reference grammar for Olwöa in LibreOffice Writer. So far I'm really enjoying it. It feels more complicated than Google Docs, but it's also more functional IMO, since there's more customizability and a lot of features are easier to reach (mostly regarding tables). I think I'm starting to really like LibreOffice, hopefully it'll become a more permanent part of my work.

[Salmoneus]

How are people able to use LibreOffice for conlangs?

I can't find any easy way to use diacritics in it. In Word, it couldn't be easier. You select a symbol in the insert symbol box, and then you can enter an easy shortcut - for instance, I use alt+- as a prefix key to put a macron on a following vowel.

But the only advice I can find online for libreoffice is to either be a computer programmer, in which case you can code scripts that run in libreoffice to let you turn a certain sequence into a certain symbol, or else you can memorise unicode and type five digits and a following code key to type the unicode symbol.

Surely, I keep thinking, in 2024, nobody could release a word processor with so little support for non-English input?

But I can't see how else to do it.

[KaiTheHomoSapien]

Macs make inserting characters with diacritics so easy, I forget it's not so on PCs. My preference was to use WinCompose, which effectively recreates the Mac experience but allows more customizability.

[_Just_A_Sketch]

I try to get around needing diacritics by using as many digraphs as possible. Wherever I do need diacritics or special characters I use https://ipa.typeit.org/full/ and copy-pasting. That's what I used for Google Docs at least. As for LibreOffice, I think macros could be used to make diacritic shortcuts, but I'll have to test that out later.
I'm also going to download the portable version of WinCompose alongside my LibreOffice so I'll see how that fairs too.

[Arayaz]

Chrome makes adding new keyboard settings really easy, so I have two keyboards installed ─ Brazilian and Czech ─ which allow me to type basically all diacritics and a lot of IPA characters. I used to use the search-V shortcut, which brings up a menu of the last things you've copied to your clipboard and allows you to paste them, to save some IPA characters, but now, since Chrome allows you to do Unicode input pretty easily (with ctrl-shift-u), I've started memorizing Unicode shortcuts. I remember most of the common ones now, such as U+283 ʃ and U+259 ə. But it is a bit of a pain, especially when I have to look up new ones.

[_Just_A_Sketch]

I used to have a sticky note for a lot of unicode shortcuts for various diacritics and IPA characters. I used the joining diaereses the most so I still have them memorized. I'm not actually sure why I stopped using it though. My school doesn't allow many different keyboards on our chromebooks (no clue why, I'm not sure what the downside of having more could be), but one of the languages that's allowed is Vietnamese, so that gets me a few good diacritics.
I think I now have an okay system on my chromebook now and a good system for windows. So thank you all for the suggestions!

[Arayaz]

My school doesn't allow many different keyboards on our chromebooks (no clue why, I'm not sure what the downside of having more could be)

Speaking as another who conlangs from a school chromebook: teachers like to restrict things by default (e.g. customizing browser color schemes, or opening websites other than Google Classroom), and you could probably talk to the administration (or just email them) and ask for the full range of keyboard options to be available, if you want.

Some keyboards just don't exist, though. I've been annoyed recently by the lack of a Tibetan keyboard. I've used a website that lets you type Tibetan characters when I need them. I believe the same thing exists for IPA characters, too. You can also copy-paste characters from Vulgarlang, which I still do when I don't remember the Unicode for them.

[_Just_A_Sketch]

I might ask about allowing more keyboards tomorrow. I think I have to talk to the person who would have access to that anyways so I might as well.

As for an online IPA keyboard, I use this site which I believe can write every IPA character (though some are hidden until you press "more" on the right).

[Ahzoh]

As for an online IPA keyboard, I use this site which I believe can write every IPA character (though some are hidden until you press "more" on the right).

Also my go to

[VaptuantaDoi]

How are people able to use LibreOffice for conlangs?

I just made a new keyboard – which is incredibly easy on mac* (so easy that even a computer-illiterate moron like myself can do so). So I can type everything except fucking ɣ which I forgot to include and am too lazy to fix, regardless of application.



* Don't know about windows; I have a mac since I have connections which can get them for free from the government.

[Nel Fie]

How are people able to use LibreOffice for conlangs?

I can't find any easy way to use diacritics in it. In Word, it couldn't be easier. You select a symbol in the insert symbol box, and then you can enter an easy shortcut - for instance, I use alt+- as a prefix key to put a macron on a following vowel.

But the only advice I can find online for libreoffice is to either be a computer programmer, in which case you can code scripts that run in libreoffice to let you turn a certain sequence into a certain symbol, or else you can memorise unicode and type five digits and a following code key to type the unicode symbol.

Surely, I keep thinking, in 2024, nobody could release a word processor with so little support for non-English input?

But I can't see how else to do it.

I've used external keyboard layout changers/input handlers. Keyman for Windows, Onboard for Ubuntu.

[lsd]

for IPA or diacritics,
simply use a font that that contains them (dejavu, arial,...)
and insert special characters...