[Wylug-help] OpenOffice non-breaking hyphen

[Smylers]

Chris Davies writes:

> I'm trying to insert a non-breaking hyphen in OpenOffice (writer), ...

Ah, I remember trying (and failing) to do something like this before.
Or perhaps that was non-breaking spaces?

> The online help says I should, "press Shift+Ctrl+ minus sign. ...
> Empirically, it appears to be implying that I should use the dash on a
> numeric keypad

Yup, only works on the numeric keypad for me too.  But well done for
finding that -- it would never have occurred to me to try!  I just
consider the numeric keypad to be alternative ways of typing the keys
elsewhere, and having that minus be different from the other minus
strikes me as a bad move by OpenOffice.

> - but my laptop doesn't have one of those. Any ideas, please?

I inserted one on a computer that does have a numeric keypad and copied
and pasted it into Vim running in a unicode terminal, which reveals it
to be unicode character U+2011, and it seems this is the correct thing
for OpenOffice to've chosen:

  http://www.eki.ee/letter/chardata.cgi?ucode=2011

OpenOffice has 'Insert' > 'Special Character' for inserting general
unicode characters.  In the 'Subset' labelled 'General punctuation'
there is  U+2010 (an ordinary, breaking hyphen) ...  but then the next
character us U+2013, an en dash -- U+2011 is missed out!

In general in Gnome you can hold down Ctrl and Shift then type in a
unicode character number (in hex).  For example in a terminal hold down
Ctrl and Shift then press 2; you should see this appear with the 2 being
underlined.  Keep Ctrl and Shift held down as you type 6, another 6, and
then A.  Finally let go of Ctrl and Shift and the digits should all
disappear to be replaced by a quaver (musical note).

But ... OpenOffice seems to break this standard Gnome feature (now
there's a suprise).

However you can use this method to type a non-breaking hyphen into a
terminal (or some other app) and then use the clipboard to transfer it
into OpenOffice!  It's tortuous, but it seems to work ...

Smylers