using Open office

Discuss anything you like about chess related matters in this forum.
soheil_hooshdaran
Posts: 3148
Joined: Tue Nov 05, 2013 5:24 pm

using Open office

Post by soheil_hooshdaran » Wed Sep 05, 2018 7:13 pm

Hi.
I have just Open office on my laptop ( I am tens of thousands of kilometers away from home) and my language is a right-to-left one. When I enter chess moves in line with my regular text, the chess notation fail to appear correctly. What should I do?

Thanks in advance

Gavin Hughes
Posts: 45
Joined: Sun Jul 23, 2017 11:36 pm

Re: using Open office

Post by Gavin Hughes » Wed Sep 05, 2018 11:35 pm

Why are you using Open Office which is not designed for chess notation. Its like trying to plough a field with a ferrari.

Besides the language left to right should not affect it thus:
1. E4 ( text) e5 2. Nf3 (txet) makes no difference as the text bit whatever the language is a text box agnostic to the chess notation.

Can u not just download a proper chess program to achieve what you want available from the web?

As chess notation is left to right. Maybe put the whole game in first and then your comments after? You may need to change the language settings from say English to your language.

soheil_hooshdaran
Posts: 3148
Joined: Tue Nov 05, 2013 5:24 pm

Re: using Open office

Post by soheil_hooshdaran » Thu Sep 06, 2018 1:29 am

downloadable chess programs don't support Unicode encoding, to the best of my knowledge.
I need to place game commentary between moves, consisting of text commentaries and variations.

Mike Gunn
Posts: 1022
Joined: Wed Apr 11, 2007 4:45 pm

Re: using Open office

Post by Mike Gunn » Fri Sep 07, 2018 10:17 am

Any decent text editor (Notepad or equivalent) should do Unicode these days. (Not sure about the right to left issue, though.)

soheil_hooshdaran
Posts: 3148
Joined: Tue Nov 05, 2013 5:24 pm

Re: using Open office

Post by soheil_hooshdaran » Fri Sep 07, 2018 9:18 pm

Mike Gunn wrote:
Fri Sep 07, 2018 10:17 am
Any decent text editor (Notepad or equivalent) should do Unicode these days. (Not sure about the right to left issue, though.)
My problem is not supporting unicode. just the right-to-left and the left-to-right thing

User avatar
Michael Farthing
Posts: 2069
Joined: Fri Apr 04, 2014 1:28 pm
Location: Morecambe, Europe

Re: using Open office

Post by Michael Farthing » Sat Sep 08, 2018 10:33 am

ٍI've spent about an hour on this. Soheil does have a difficult task. I failed to get my (rather old) version of Open Office to do this but then tried it on the fork package Libre Office and (more or less) got it to work. In that package in the Paragraph formatting, Alignment tab there is an option "Text Direction" not present in my version of Open office. This needs to be set as "Right to Left". This sets the default direction for the whole paragraph, not just for the different language snippets. Pretending for a moment that Americans had long ago decided to write English from right to left I'll try to set out the change this setting makes:

I shall be using the sentence "Ruy Lopez begins 1. e4 35 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 often continuing with 3...h6" but with the commentary parts written with my imagined "American" right left convention.

(a) Left to right paragraph with mixture of "American" with Chess:

Code: Select all

snigeb zepoL yuR 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3 Bb5 htiw gniunitnoc netfo 3...h6
(b) Right to left paragraph with the same input:

Code: Select all

3...h6   htiw gniunitnoc netfo  1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3 Bb5 snigeb zepoL yuR
[The above line should be right justified as well, but I don't think that can be done in a post]

Even with this setting entry is quite tedious. There is also a "feature" that universal characters (eg digits) can be interpreted as part of either of the two scripts in use. The effect is that, for example, the 1 of 1. e4 etc gets interpreted as part of the "American" snippet yielding:

Code: Select all

h6   ...3  htiw 3 gnieunitnoc netfo   e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3 Bb5 .1 snigeb zepoL yuR
Hopefully this might give some help to Soheil, but I hope will also make clear to others the sort of problems he is facing
Last edited by Michael Farthing on Sat Sep 08, 2018 2:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Joshua Gibbs

Re: using Open office

Post by Joshua Gibbs » Sat Sep 08, 2018 12:35 pm

I would advise you to download a free source chess book in farsi, open it in open office and then copy their settings and type from there.

Michael Flatt
Posts: 1235
Joined: Tue Jul 02, 2013 7:36 am
Location: Hertfordshire

Re: using Open office

Post by Michael Flatt » Sat Sep 08, 2018 1:55 pm

I endorse Michael Farthing's suggestion to use Libre Office rather than Open Office.

Obviously the direction of text is related to the script in which the language is written. So, setting up the document in your preferred language and formatting the relevant paragraphs in the other language would allow both to be used in a single document.

A simple internet search produces:
(i) Libre Office supported languages: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/li ... ?lang=pick
(ii) Libre Office selecting a language: https://help.libreoffice.org/Common/Sel ... t_Language

soheil_hooshdaran
Posts: 3148
Joined: Tue Nov 05, 2013 5:24 pm

Re: using Open office

Post by soheil_hooshdaran » Wed Sep 12, 2018 3:42 pm

I appreciate your help guys

soheil_hooshdaran
Posts: 3148
Joined: Tue Nov 05, 2013 5:24 pm

Re: using Open office

Post by soheil_hooshdaran » Wed Sep 12, 2018 3:43 pm

I appreciate your help guys

User avatar
Matt Mackenzie
Posts: 5205
Joined: Tue Mar 31, 2009 11:51 pm
Location: Millom, Cumbria

Re: using Open office

Post by Matt Mackenzie » Wed Sep 12, 2018 4:20 pm

You can say that again ;)
"Set up your attacks so that when the fire is out, it isn't out!" (H N Pillsbury)