Topic Disappearing char's in Excel and OpenOffice Spreadsheet

Hello,

I'm using Keyman 6.0.164.0 on XP Tablet. I also use the Dvorak setting of Window.

When first typing an ŋ (or several other letters that require the < or >) in a cell in OpenOffice Spreadsheet all the letters up to the ŋ get wiped out. For instance, if I typed "taokŋ" the "taok" will disappear. When I re-type into the same cell it will work. Move to the next cell type the same word or a different word with the same kind of letter and it will happen again.

In Excel, try to type the word "ečoŋa" by entering "ec@13on>a" and you will get "ěoŋa". The ONLY way to get it to work is to type "ecc@13on>a". Which ever letter you want the diacritic rest on you have to type twice.

Neither problem exists in the other application. At this point Excel wins because it is easier to type a letter twice than to retype the whole word.

Any thoughts on how to avoid this problem?

-Jason Hopkins

[quote="jason.hopkins"]Hello,

I'm using Keyman 6.0.164.0 on XP Tablet. I also use the Dvorak setting of Window.

When first typing an ŋ (or several other letters that require the < or >) in a cell in OpenOffice Spreadsheet all the letters up to the ŋ get wiped out. For instance, if I typed "taokŋ" the "taok" will disappear. When I re-type into the same cell it will work. Move to the next cell type the same word or a different word with the same kind of letter and it will happen again.

In Excel, try to type the word "ečoŋa" by entering "ec@13on>a" and you will get "ěoŋa". The ONLY way to get it to work is to type "ecc@13on>a". Which ever letter you want the diacritic rest on you have to type twice.

Neither problem exists in the other application. At this point Excel wins because it is easier to type a letter twice than to retype the whole word.

Any thoughts on how to avoid this problem?

-Jason Hopkins[/quote]

Hi Jason,

I do not currently have OpenOffice installed on my test computer here, but will test this issue with OpenOffice Spreadsheet shortly.

The Excel issue was a bit more complex. It turns out that Excel (very incorrectly!) stops certain diacritic marks from appearing on top of certain letters - Keyman sends the diacritic mark (in this case combining grave accent) to Excel, and Excel does not accept it. However, Keyman does not (and cannot!) know that Excel has not actually put it into the text stream, so it tries to delete the diacritic mark to replace it with the combining caron and ends up deleting the 'c' instead.

I will be contacting Microsoft about this issue, because I believe that the Excel developers are making invalid assumptions about character input.

You could make a workaround for the problem by including a shortcut for the particular issue that you are experiencing in the IPA Unicode keyboard, using Keyman Developer, and avoid inputting the grave accent at all. You can download the source for the IPA Unicode keyboard here:

http://scripts.sil.org/UniIPAKeyboard

If you want assistance with this, we can certainly provide this through our normal support channels, if you have a licence for Keyman 6.0 or 6.2, or by purchasing a support case at:

http://www.tavultesoft.com/account/home/support/

Kind Regards,

Marc Durdin
Tavultesoft Pty Ltd