Hi,
Kracked_P_P---webmaster schrieb:
The problem I have with "selling" LO to computer centers, both
regular and ones that teach English as a second language, is how
many languages can LO support at the same time.
I am talking about two ways. 1 - usable dictionaries in the
list. 2 - different languages you can change your menus to.
The first one is the key for me.
You have English, French, Spanish [3 regional versions], Italian,
and 4 or 5 other different language dictionaries, installed and
enabled, in the Extension Manager. How many of those languages
are usable to the user writing documents in English and one or two
other languages at a time, then someone else sits down and tried
to use his or hers language[s] with English. So how many
installed and enabled languages can be used at the same time? I
was told there was a very small limited number.
I know no restriction. StarOffice was shipped with about fourteen
languages and had over twenty Autotext variants. Why do not test it?
Then the second is not much of a problem for me. Yet, since you
can switch between language packs and their help packs, how many
can you install and be able to switch back and forth between
English and the other non-English languages?
Some as above, I know no restriction.
Of course, if a center worker needs to switch the menus back to
English, or to their default settings, how easy is it if the
person/worker does not read/speak the language the menu is
currently in?
If the language is bound to the person, you can use different user
settings and provide each user a prepared link to his special user
settings.
For example on Windows
"C:\Program Files\LibreOffice 4\program\soffice.exe"
-env:UserInstallation=file:///f:/SoftwareLO/user_DE
will launch LibreOffice with the user settings in folder
f:/SoftwareLO/user_DE. And this different user settings can use
different languages in UI. You can even run LibreOffice one time
and have several calls to it with different user settings parallel.
Is it possible to
make a script to reset the "preferences" back to a default instead
of some manual copy/paste-over some file?
Changing the UI from one language to another for the same user
requires to restart LibreOffice.
I do not use any language, other than American English, but others
do need to deal with more than one language. I met a lady a
number of years ago. She was from my area of the USA, but she
worked in Israel as a travel "advisor". She had to use several
different packages of MS Office, since she needed to write in
English, French, Hebrew, and one other language that I cannot
remember the name of. I told her that with the language support
of LO she could use it to write in which ever language she needed
to do. I do not know if LO can write both English and Hebrew,
since one is left to right and the other is right to left [if I
remember correctly], but if the document was only in Hebrew, or
English, or French, no problems.
It is no problem. For example, if the person likes to use an
English keyboard layout, you can write a couple of macros to insert
the special characters of French. You can bind them to short cut
keys or provide a toolbar, where the icons show the character. So
they can be used without using the Insert-Special-Character dialog
and without remembering unicode code point.
If the whole document is in a foreign language, than provide a
suitable document template, where the language is already set in
the default template.
For switching inside a document you do not only have the already
mentioned hard formatting methods, but you can define paragraph
styles for each needed language and collect them into a document
templates.
One package can do what she needs to
do. We have the language support and the spell checking
dictionaries to be added on with the language packs or via the
Extension Manager and a lot of various language spell checking and
other language aid extensions, sometimes several different ones
for the same language.
So multi-lingual users, multi-lingual computer center users, etc.,
etc., need to know what the limits to the number of languages
supported at the same time for LO.
I suggest, to test it. All those packages are free, and you can say
'I have tested it, it works at least with ...languages.'
Kind regards
Regina