[libreoffice-users] behaviour of autocorrect for inserting special characters

LO 5.1.1.3, Windows 10
1. Background: After 22 years of using MS Word, I decided to switch to LO
Writer, which entailed losing hundreds of keyboard shortcuts I'd set up for
inserting special characters, such as IPA. Recreating the system in LO by
creating a macro for each character and assigning it a keyboard shortcut
was too much labour, and the ComposeSpecialCharacters extension for LO is
insufficiently extensive (and apparently not customizable). So my chosen
solution was to edit the autocorrect file (DocumentList.xml in
acor_en-GB.dat), adding about 700 entries and deleting all the unwanted
ones (that deal with misspellings).

2. Behaviour of autocorrect for inserting special characters. From
experiment, I find that if the to-be-replaced text starts and ends with a
colon, then the replacement works in any environment, such as
word-internally, but otherwise it works only if the to-be-replaced text is
in restricted environments, such as preceded and followed by a space, but
not word-internally. For example :zh: can be set up to insert ʒ (ezh) into
the middle of an orthographic word, but `zh cannot be.

3. First question: Is (2) a correct characterization of LO's workings? I've
not found any relevant online documentation.

4. Second question: Can the behaviour described in (2) be modified?
(a) For example, is there a way to make it possible for `zh to insert ʒ
(ezh) into the middle of a word? (This would save me having to reedit the
700 autocorrect items I set up for special characters, and it would also
save keystrokes when inputting the short to-be-replaced forms.)
(b) If autocorrect items that work word-internally must start and end with
a colon, is there some way to change the delimiting character from a colon
to something else? (Main reason: I already use flanking colons like :this:
as a key notational device in my own work.)

TIA

--And.

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