I want to enter a single Hebrew character in English text. In my example aleph refers to Codex Sinaiticus, but equally it might refer to infinity. Libreoffice is too clever for me and immediately decides I want to type right-to-left. This becomes terrible confusing, so much so that I have not been able to enter Aleph 1(superscripted) Can I disable this feature?
Ubuntu 16.04 Libreoffice 5.1.4.2
Possible solution: do not enter a plain Hebrew alef, use a letter-like symbol alef ℵ (U+8501) instead.
Thanks for the suggestion, Gabix. However, I’m not clear what you mean by ‘letter-like’ instead of ‘plain’ Hebrew. I have been entering U+5D0 (א), and at once Write switches to right to left. In several fonts I have tried 8501 doesn’t seem to produce anything. In fact it seems to be Chinese.
‘Letter-like’ means that the respective symbol (not only alef, there are other letter-like symbols) is not used in conventional writing but in special circumstances such as, yes, formulas etc. Either copy the symbol from my answer or use Insert → Special character… from the menu, then select Letterlike symbols using the Subset selector. There, you will see it. If you don’t, try another font, such as DejaVu Sans, Linux Libertine G, Linux Biolinum G, etc.
Sorry for the delay responding to this. I copied your Aleph successfully & now realise that your unicode was decimal, not hex - oops! So problem solved, thank you. Mysteriously, however, when I look for letter-like symbols with special character insert, there are only 6 on offer (℅ ℓ № ™ Ω ℮). A little further down the table there are some Hebrew characters under ‘alphabetical presentation forms’, which include varieties of Aleph, but they still cause Writer to switch to right-to-left.
Then select a font other than you use. A letter-like alef may be missing even in common fonts but is not something exotic :-). Presentation forms are another thing, don’t touch them unless you know for sure that it is what you need.