Option "Ignore system input language" should be default

English
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#1

Hello,
by default, writer keeps changing the language of the document basing on the input keyboard.
Every time i change computer, reinstall or similar situations, I must go to this topic (from 2012!):

I am also aware of Bug 36324

Please, set the option “Ignore system input language” as default.

The “solution” in version 4 is not a real solution. It requires the poor user, that is not able to set the language for his/her own document to find in a labyrinth of options the one that fits, and the only real way is to loose time in Google, because of the assumption that if my keyboard uses language L, “all my documents” must be of language L, regardless of their language.

There is no reason why, after manually changing language for the whole document (CTRL-A, selecting language), writer should decide to set the language to the one of input. I may have an Italian keyboard and by that keyboard i should be able to manage also English/French etc. documents.
Many people don’t know the option and get crazy, like I did for many years.

Also the input keyboard means nothing. I customized a Polish keyboard using MsKLC (Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator) and I write 6 different languages by ONE keyboard, but Windows and writer recognize it as Polish keyboard.
This means, that all documents in Italian, English, and so on are set to Polish after i start writing in a new paragraph.

Again, please, listen your users; set the option “Ignore system input language” as default.
It’s not a very difficult change for a developer, but a big step for humanity.

#3

This is a user to user support site; we - other users - can’t implement changes to the software. See Feature requests

#2

  1. ask your developers to set the option “Ignore system input language” as default after fresh installation.
    Nobody will need to change that useless option.

  2. A different solution could be to show the option in a better visible place. It should be on the menu in the main window, when you click the language and theoretically you can change it (but you cannot, because 1) is not default. This can be another solution.

#4

No.

It is only a problem for the poor users who (1) are only using Roman scripts in their writing; (2) use several of them (e.g., English + French); and (3) don’t know how to set up their operating system properly - i.e., that their Windows (because the discussed feature currently only* works on Windows - tdf#108151) allows setting up several input languages (with one or different keyboard layouts) to switch between them using system-defined keyboard shortcuts.

For the majority of world’s population, who use several keyboard layouts on their OSes, attached to different input language, this feature helps them to not care about manual switching of document languages. And the proportion of users in the world who don’t use Roman scripts exclusively (like myself, using English + Russian) is much greater than those who want to disable this feature (by enabling the “Ignore” checkbox), like you.

The checkbox must definitely stay unchecked by default.

(And of course, writing “listen to your users” on a user-to-user Ask site is silly.)

* And on Qt5, since 7.2 - which is likely a tiny fraction of a percent of all users

#5

A different solution could be to show the option in a better visible place. It should be on the menu in the main window, when you click the language. This can be another solution.
.

«(1) are only using Roman scripts in their writing; (2) use several of them (e.g., English + French);»
↑ That’s a lot of people, billions!
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«(3) don’t know how to set up their operating system properly»
That’s not true. the input system is only one at time. I already mentioned i customized a keyboard layout to input many languages, but i had to set 1 main language, and that’s Polish (because i used that layout as base and added letters for other languages). But I use that layout keyboard to write 6 languages.
.

«allows setting up several input languages (with one or different keyboard layouts)»
YES. But it’s always one at a time. Why, while you are using the English layout, you open a document with Spanish language, the language of the document should be changed to English?? And what if you don’t even have installed Spanish, but you want to correct anyway a word, why the paragraph should be changed? So you have to install the Spanish input just because once you want to open a document in Spanish? :slight_smile:
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«because the discussed feature currently only* works on Windows»
at the moment, the most widely spread OS :slight_smile: especially for document writing and office work. I prefer and use Linux on my servers, but most of my customers connect to them using windows.
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«(And of course, writing “listen to your users” on a user-to-user Ask site is silly.)»
Do you know where to ask to libreoffice people? I will write there in such case, and leave this discussion

#6

No. The whole native-Roman-speaking population is no greater than one billion (roughly, part of Europe + Americas + Australia). And only part of that population uses several of Roman languages (and only them - not other scripts) when writing. Thus it can’t be billions. The whole Asia and Africa (again, roughly) - and that is the major part of the population - uses other scripts - Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, Thai, … All of them use several layouts on their systems.

Your current text language is also one at a time. And when you press a key to type a character into your document, you always send it in a single language. And when you change typing from one language to another, you have to change the text language in the editor (if you care about that, e.g. when you use spell check - and if you don’t care, then you wouldn’t question).

And if you have several configured system input languages (note how I don’t speak about different layouts!), then you may use the system shortcut to change the language, and Writer will understand you. But if you don’t do that using system method, then you still need to do that - using Writer method (e.g., using a style with defined language). So you would still need to do something manual.

And when you do have the language configured in system, you definitely do want Writer see you are typing in English, and change to that, despite the previous text was Spanish.

#7

OK, if less than one billion people has a problem, it’s not a problem. Very logical solution.

Anyway, the number of native speakers in millions: Spanish (474,7) + English (372,9) + Portuguese (232,4) = 1080 millions, more than 1 billion; and I didn’t count other languages, as French, Vietnamese, Filipino, Italian… so maybe we can continue :slight_smile:
If not enough, we could add other alphabets that are used by different languages, example Cyrillic. They also can have the same problem
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« Your current text language is also one at a time.»
I think you didn’t understand the problem. Last time: if you don’t have the Spanish keyboard set in your system, but you modify something in a document, the document will be CHANGED to the language of your keyboard. You may not want to install all the keyboards, and set them if you don’t need particular letters.
Also you can write a document in multiple languages and that settings only causes problems, except if you use different alphabets.
If you use more languages with the same alphabet (can be also Ukrainian and Bulgarian, it does not have to be only Latin), you will have this problem.

BTW, do you know where to write to official support?

#8

I also write multi-language documents with a single keyboard layout.

But be aware that writing multilingual documents is tricky to get it right. It requires proper usage of paragraph and character styles where you advertise the current language. Keyboard input is only one aspect of the problem. I personally consider it minor (in my case) because I follow a very strict styling method.

Styling is the key to success. You must realise that styles go far beyond typographical visual aspect. Styles are part of your text significance. They are a meta-mark up where you communicate the semantics to Writer. Writer is only partially capable of using this semantic markup (mainly making the distinction between headings and narrative to collect TOC entries), but you , the author, absolutely need this semantic markup to achieve your desired formatting and layout in an easy and comfortable way.

Automatic switching without author’s consent is a nuisance. But consider the huge majority if users who can’t depart from typewriter era habits (and never read manuals). The present implementation and all its “compatibility” options (which I generally disagree with) make a sound approach to Writer, avoiding immediate rejection (because of years of conditioning by the dominating suite which pretends to be the “absolute reference”).

When you progress in Writer fluency, you customise your copy to suit your needs. Of course, this means saving your user profile to avoid erasure on update.

#9

Did I said “there is no problem”? Please re-read your claim of “Nobody will need to change that useless option”. And then stop replacing others’ words. It was you who dismissed everyone who doesn’t think like you do.

I am Russian. And I tell you, that exactly Cyrillic users benefit from the automatic switch.

I understand the problem very clearly, much better than you. And I understand your way of thinking (while you don’t understand mine). I just say, that the default is good. Making the control more visible is OK; that you don’t want to learn something new is also OK. But dismissing what you don’t understand is not OK.

#10

ajlittoz thanks, finally somebody understands.
But consider that is also a matter of hardware. For example in this moment i am using a Polish keyboard (i mean, the hardware, not software). If I want to change to Italian layout to write a document in Italian, i CANNOT set the windows Italian keyboard. Why? Because on the key where the Polish keyboard has the semicolon “;”, the Italian keyboard has the letter “ò”. So I will press the key with semicolon and I will get “ò”. It’s confusing.

So it’s not true what mikekaganski says, that people are not able to set a different keyboard. Because national keyboards can have letters or symbols in different places, and even a different number of keys. For example, italian keyboard does NOT have the key with apostrophe `, it is not present. That’s why i use the polish keyboard, because by using ` as dead key, I can create the letters i need: à ł òó È.
If I use polish hardware to write a document in Italian, and I don’t want to buy a new physical (hardware) keyboard only for Italian (or any new language i will learn) I will have problems with write.

#11

Sigh - it is indeed sad, when people don’t read, and then claim that others don’t understand.

Why would I stress that part of my phrase? Why would I also quote another part:

You simply don’t know (and don’t want to understand when told) that you may have different input languages with the same single keyboard layout.

But that’s irrelevant. You may use whatever method in your work. Just accept that your way is not necessarily what others may want; and that those others may be the majority. Improving visibility is, as said, OK.

#12

But note tdf#151290. Language is not a formatting (and of course, not a matter of style). It is an integral part of the text; and as such, current Writer method of applying the language by setting a formatting (direct or styled) is a typewriter-era convention. IMO, the discussed feature, if combined by the implemented proposal from the mentioned bug, would be much more correct.

Basically, it’s a typewriter-era thinking, when people imagine that a in English and a in Italian is the same character. It’s technically difficult to have each language have 100% own set of characters; it was impossible in pre-Unicode era, and it’s still not implemented now, because it would be rather disruptive technologically. Otherwise, computers would have no problem understanding what language the user uses.

The combination of the characters (often the same characters) plus language coming form system is a good substitution for that imagined "each language has its own a" idea; a very good technical solution. It only needs a small initial effort of creating another habit (which, as I said, the majority of population has anyway; it’s only by chance that some part of the population is unaware of that).

#13

This is where there is a huge misunderstanding between layout and language.

Since I am not a touch typist (I need to look at my keyboard to send the desired character), I use a single physical keyboard for all languages. Changing layout would be a nightmare for me because I don’t know all possible layouts. There is already a plethora of them in a single language varying with the country.

I customised the keyboard mapping for 2nd and 3rd level to assign glyphs not present on my keyboard and not needed in my national language so that they are available with simultaneous modifier press. A ~100-key keyboard can generate ~300-400 characters. This should be enough for Latin-alphabet languages. Diacritics are entered as dead keys which spares a lot of individual assignments: composed characters are entered as diacritic(s) followed by base glyph. OS Unicode handling eventually substitutes pre-composed glyphs.

I chose to allocate my extra glyphs based on shape similarity. This also means I have moved some OS-defined 2nd- or 3rd-level default assignments because I found them not mnemotechnic enough (they are mainly designed for a US keyboard and translators never thought about the different layout requiring to reallocate also these special characters).

#15

mikekaganski I think you didn’t understand.
I know about unicode, UTF-8, ASCII (7 bits + parity bit), LATIN-x and similar (8 bits differently interpreted according to the language)… and so on, also from a technical point of view (I had to manage transition to UTF8 of some systems, solved the same problems in different ways according to the programming language.
BUT: if writer recognizes a different language, even if the alphabet is the same, (example: latin based, like english and italian, or Cyrillic, like Bulgarian and Ucrainian) you have other problems, ALSO of formatting, but not only.
Examples:
Quotation marks: some language use “quotation marks”, other languages use „quotation marks", others use something styled «like this», while others use »like this«.
And writer will decide for you what style to use, because he is ignoring the language you set.

And of course, if the language is different, everything will be underlined in red because words are not recognized.

But if you know better than me the problems I try to explain, why should I still loose time by explaining you?

#16

@Fresco: I am sure you didn’t understand.

I know that if you do not use the system input languages properly, i.e. you only have a single input language configured on your system, and you use it to type in different languages, you have the problems you describe, unless you disable the language recognition based on system input language (i.e., unless you enable the Ignore checkbox).

What you still do not understand is that the intended workflow is that you configure multiple input languages in your system - and you can have all of them using the same keyboard layout (which I repeat again). Then you simply switch the system input language using a system keyboard shortcut, and Writer knows automatically which language you use - which enables you to type things like “In Russian, this phrase is без труда не выловить и рыбку из пруда”, and it would not require you to set languages of the parts of the phrase manually in Writer, and it would not underline the parts of the phrases in red because of the language mismatch, exactly because it took the language from the system, which knew the language because you changed it when typing. (I used Russian piece inside the English phrase, because I know these languages; but it could be Italian inside French, with the same success.)

And you simply don’t want to listen to the “it’s OK if you use a different method”, which I already told above - just you need to realize that there is a different workflow than what you use, and that other workflow needs the checkbox unchecked.

But if you don’t want to read and comprehend, why waste my time more.

#17

I understood the intended behaviour you mean. But that is wrong.
The language should be calculated by the written text, not the input used to write that text.
For example, let’s suppose you have a Russian computer that has set also French, no problem with those 2 languages. One day your Italian friend asked you to use the computer 5 minutes to correct typos in his document by using the French input you have. Do you need to configure the Italian language just because else Writer will set his document to French?

Other application guess the language by analysing the written text. For example now i am writing in English, because I am writing English words and sentences, even if I didn’t configure English in my system and I am using a Vietnamese input language (that’s not true, just an example).

It’s not that I didn’t understand the mechanism, but the system of guessing the language used by Writer is based on a wrong assumption, that works only in ideal conditions and make too much simplifications . Maybe it was good 15 years ago, but every application can be improved, and that’s what I am trying to explain

#18

If a friend asks me to use the system for 5 minutes, there’s no problem of doing that without any setup, and applying the language manually.

Trying to set the language “from written text” means intelligence. There is no AI in LibreOffice (and I don’t discuss the accuracy of such a guessing in short phrases). So this idea is just a wishful thinking.

And unlike browsers (that actually don’t need much of language support, and where a fuzzy spell check is about all that is enough), in Writer, an accuracy of language application affects not only the spell check, but also e.g. hyphenation (affecting layout), autocorrection, punctuation, word bounds, and so on. We can’t afford automatic language detection not explicitly defined by user - and in case of system input, the language that user chose is one of these explicit methods (of course, if user is aware / uses this - and we assume that users use this).

#19

«and applying the language manually»
No, Writer will overwrite the language, will set the document language (or paragraph) to French or Russian (your system language you are using as input), even if you manually set “Italian”(*).

«Trying to set the language “from written text” means intelligence. There is no AI in LibreOffic»

you don’t need advanced AI, just a check
IF all the words of the paragraph that is set to ITALIAN are underlined when you set it to French, DON’T change the language to French. Expecially if the user every 2 minutes sets the language to ITalian and you, Writer, one second later change the language of the document to French again.

Or in a different way: if the user sets the language of the document to X, Writer should not change it.

(*) I think you have the option ‘Ignore system input language’ set to true, that’s why you don’t see that Writer overwrites the language of documents. Uncheck that, then open a new document in any language different than French/russian, let’s call it language X and will see that you can do 100 times:
CTRL-A, set language X
after a while you write, the language of the document will be again set to French (or Rusisan).

I should show you if you cannot see the problem, maybe i am not good in explaining.

#20

OMG.

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You can’t even know what I’m talking about, unless you use different input languages (and you said you don’t). Your assumptions are wrong therefore.

Not mentioning that I’m a LibreOffice developer, knowing not only how to use it, but also how it works internally…

And of course, for that 5-minute edit session, the language application will happen after typing it, not before. Again, for that 5-minute session, that would be enough. Or, if the friend is annoyed, I’d set the “Ignore” for their editing session.

You may watch https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/attachment.cgi?id=195059 (from tdf#161850) to see it in action. Indeed, the part about how the unchecked “Ignore” checkbox affects the typed language is only tangential there, because the issue it was recorded for is different.

Indeed, in the screencast, I talk about keyboard layouts (just because in my case, the two languages also use different layouts). That’s irrelevant.

And I know what would happen, if I set a text language to e.g. Italian, and start typing there using my en-US layout/language. I know that it will turn English (USA), even if the words will be Italian. Yes I know that. I tell you that this is exactly the other use method, which ignores the system input language - and then I would either set up the other input language in my system, or check the “Ignore” checkbox.

This is nonsense. The change occurs for the character you type; at this point, there is no “word” yet, let alone “sentence”. The old text keeps its language; so it would need to let user type the whole text, and then spell-check, then get back to the old language - and what if not 100% of the words are underlined in changed language, and not 100% words are correct in old language?
Then, this requires a use of a spell check. Not everyone has automatic spell check enabled. The language mechanism is not just spell check, as I mentioned above. Basically, this complicated idea requires AI, again.

Wrong. First, there is no “document language” at all. There is a language of a specific text (well, it may happen to cover whole text body).
Then, It is often, that the whole my text is Russian - I may even assign it explicitly. Now I switch to English, and type an English word. No, it is not OK for Writer, to continue setting my English part of the text as Russian. I do expect this new part to be English.

So - again: everything that you write is simply: “I don’t want my Writer to use the system input language” (that’s ok; that’s your choice); “and I want Writer, by default, to work as I want - and I consider that feature, that I never used, and I actually don’t even know how to use, useless - and it must be therefore turned off by checking Ignore checkbox, or by changing the algorithm in a way that would make it broken / unusable / indistinguishable for the “Ignore checkbox unchecked” state, or even be removed altogether”.

I see what you say. I know how it works in any mode (and on any operating system). Now it’s time for you to try to understand what I say. You may consider asking questions if something is unclear…

#21

OK, it’s clear.
We don’t agree because you didn’t understand what problem I mean.
Maybe I also don’t understand what you mean.
Since we are not in the same room, I cannot show you the issue “live” and why it’s a problem.
Take care.

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