Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 51160
Only show installed languages in Character formatting dialog
Last modified: 2013-02-07 22:43:09 UTC
THe list of languages in the character formatting dialog is very long, if you use multiple languages in a document, finding the correct one is tedious. Maybe there could be a setting in Tools - Options - Language Settings to only show: a) languages whose dictionary is installed (the users are likely to have installed dictionaries for all the languages they ever use) b) languages already applied in the document Should anyone want to apply a language attribute for a language not installed, they can still turn the option off. THis could also be set to OFF by default to keep compatible with existing installs.
Reassigned
OpenOffice.org Issue Tracker - Feedback Request. The Issue you raised is currently assigned to 'Requirements' pending review, but has not been updated within the last 3 years. Please consider re-testing with one of the latest versions of OOo, as the problem(s) may have already been addressed. Either use the recent stable version: http://download.openoffice.org/index.html or consider trying the new OOo 3 BETA (still in testing): http://download.openoffice.org/3.0beta/ Please report back the outcome so this Issue may be Closed or Progressed as necessary - otherwise it may be Resolved as Invalid in the future. You may also wish to search for (and note) any duplicates of this Issue that may have advanced further by checking the Issue Tracker: http://www.openoffice.org/issues/query.cgi Many thanks, Andrew Cleaning-up and Closing old Issues as part of: ~ The Grand Bug Squash, pre v3 ~ http://marketing.openoffice.org/3.0/announcementbeta.html
With the number of available and supported languages increasing every time a new version of OO.o is released, I thing this feature request makes more sense than ever.
This feature won't make sense. Why not allow someone to format his text as "Afrikaans" e.g. though the language module is not installed? It is allowed to write Afrikaans texts without having it installed. Also, meanwhile the installed language is visible by a small mark in the language listbox.
Closed, feature makes no sense, it must be allowed to everyone to get any language at any time.
The list of supported languages in OO.O keeps growing with every release (which is a good thing), but if you want to format text as using a specific language, this list in the Dialog "Format/Character" has now become unwieldy. As an example: I use German, English (UK) and English (US), French and Spanish. I don't usually get texts in other languages. Yet, when I want to format the text as using French, I have to scroll down a long list of languages that are not even installed and that I never use. So a switch to not show languages that are not installed would make sense and would make life easer for 99% of users. Maybe a feature where installed languages are shown first (like the recently used fonts in the font list) would be more acceptable.
Please let someone rain developer ressources... :-) Note that when this shall be under the users control to show/hide "unwanted" languages, it would require UI making it a "Feature", involving more people han "just some coder" to get into the Office (Development + User Expereience + QA + Documentation + Translation!). Like "hide when hyphenation is missing unless spellcheck is there for all languages. But let me override any missing language if i want to set languages I do not have support for yet"... I can think of many "details to be considered" here that require UI, I can hardly imagine ANY solution without UI. Some hidden settings that only developers or admins have access to will keep this feature from the "broad masses" that do not toy with their office but use it. Given the currenltly available developer ressources, we may keep this one open forever. Well, be it if someone sleeps better then. This is by far not the first "idea" that will wait for ressouces and wait and wait and wait. However, confirming this issue does not mean that I see a chance this ever being looked at again by someone who can sponsor developer ressources. There will be bigger fish to catch in the foreseeable future. Reassigned to requirements.
Clearly this is not a vital task. But going through almost 200 languages is quite annoying. As suggested later by gostner, it wouldn't be easier to show first installed languages?
As suggested by several comments, the best solution is to show installed languages first, followed by a ----- line, then the other languages. That way the user has no configuration to do, and only when they want to access a non-installed language will they ever have to scroll the (horrendously) long list. This approach has been used in a number of other (non-OOo) contexts, and works very nicely (from the user point of view).