Is there an option for adding Hebrew vowels (nikud) in this program?
What operating system?
I think this is a matter of font. LO Writer is language-agnostic. It takes whatever you type and passes it to the rendering engine. Its parsing is limited to determining what should be considered as a “word”. In simple justification, words are laid out as atomic entities while spaces between words can be expanded when needed to align line ends with margins.
Some languages have more complex rules when glyphs are glued together to form words (e.g. arabic or hindi) but basically Writer, at first glance, for most languages, does not look inside words.
Just a comment: OOoFBTools has a virtual Hebrew keyboard that enables, inter alia, input of Hebrew vowels.
“Writer, at first glance, for most languages, does not look inside words.” I’m not sure what you mean by this. When בּ is entered (or copied and pasted) in Writer and then backspace is pressed, it removes the niqqud but leaves the bet.
I understand that the glyph is a composed form (bet+niqquud). Niqqud is perhaps a combining diacritics in Unicode parlance. Backspacing removes then only one codepoint of the final glyph. I have not heard that backspacing in a sequence of base codepoint + combining diacritics should remove the full sequence. That would make editing the final glyph a real pain. In that sense, Writer “does not look in the sequence” and just considers individual codepoints without consideration for context.
As a result, obtaining glyphs from the keyboard is an OS matter (keyboard layout + modifiers and “dead” diacritics). A universal workaround, as you point out, is to insert a character from the Unicode repertory.
The keys to enter בּ for example, depend on the keyboard layout. I have used this in many versions of Writer and never encountered a problem displaying niqqud.
Hints for some keyboard layouts on various operating systems are described at Niqqud - Wikipedia.
Generally, the best keyboard layout solution is keyman, and it no longer requires purchase.
Alternatively, instead of using a keyboard layout solution, go to Insert → Special Character.
The ability to insert characters of specific languages is part of the operating system. The ability to actually see or print these characters depend on font used.
Having your language toolbar set to Hebrew, and using a hebrew font…
After typing the hebrew letter, press Caps Lock,
and then enter the nikkud by typing Shift+Key (one or more times, depending on how many nekudot)
where Key is one of the keys on the top row of the keyboard (`,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,0,-,=) or ‘’