At present Autotext does not work on individual characters. I would like to be able to type i followed by F3 to obtain the fi ligature (say, in Times New Roman). Autotext does this if i is the first letter of a word, but not otherwise (for a word beginning 'afi' if I type 'ai' followed by F3 it says it cannot find the Autotext entry for 'ai').
Hello, The problem is not about the length of the Autotext. You will have the same problem whatever the length of the Autotext. In LibreOffice Autotext must be identified as a single word. It is not possible have the name of the Autotext sticked to other letters. The enhancement would require a better detection of the name of Autotext: search among Autotext if one is present just near cursor, even if not separated with blanks as a word. For your application, I would suggest an Autocorrect replacement instead of Autotext: Replace: .*fi.* By: fi will work any time you type "fi" (alone, at the beginning/middle/end of a word), whatever your font is. Replacement is carry out ALL THE TIME, when word is finished.
Your solution works, but requires typing of five characters to produce one ligature. What I am seeking/suggesting is a way of inserting a ligature by typing two characters. This is possible in Microsoft Word by (for instance) pressing a function key (e.g., F1) followed by the letter 'i' to get the 'fi' ligature while typing. Could such an enhancement be made possible for Libre Office?
(In reply to mkassler from comment #2) > Your solution works, but requires typing of five characters to produce one > ligature. I don't understand what you mean by typing five characters. You just need to define once your extra replacement in Autocorrection options, and it will be saved in your LibreOffice settings. Then, typing 'fi' somewhere in your text will be automatically replaced by ligature.
Thank you very much. This works.
Autocorrection dialog (Tools -> AutoCorrect -> AutoCorrect Options already provides for a keyboard input --two character or three character--ligature replacement with a string or Unicode glyph for the ligature--as it is defined. The AutoCorrect dialog, likewise provides alternatives to Deadkey (bug 71176) or os/DE provided GUI (bug 42437 for macOS Press & Hold) for Unicode glyph input. While the Windows 10 (build > 1709) Emoji popup dialog functions--and follows the Paragraph style font assignments for inserted glyph (or as set by font fallback). So, agree there is really no need to attempt this with an AutoText... dialog entry. IMHO => WF