Description: I'm using LibreOffice to compose and edit a novel-length manuscript. My main characters are written to have an American background, but a major character/narrator is written to have a British background and I am attempting to write her words with a British voice. I also have occasional use of foreign (German, French, Latin, etc.) words and phrases. For editing and spell-checking purposes it would be helpful if I could auto-highlight portions of the manuscript by the language chosen under Tools>Language>For Selection in user-selectable colors. This way I could tell at a glance if a paragraph which shows a suspected misspelling was set for English (UK) or English (US), and make the changes accordingly. Then, of course, I would need to be able to turn the auto-highlight off for printing and conversion to PDF. It's possible that this functionality already exists but that I have not yet found it in the documentation. If this is the case I apologize and thank you for calling it to my attention. Steps to Reproduce: 1. Select a portion of the manuscript. 2. Use Tools>Language>For Selection to change the language used in the selection 3. (New) Turn on "Auto-Highlight>By Language (new feature) and select (examples) light red for English (US), light blue for English (UK), light yellow for Latin, etc. Actual Results: Auto-highlight does not yet exist (that I know about) and there is no simple way to tell at a glance if a paragraph or phrase is designated to be spell-checked in a language which differs from that of the manuscript as a whole. Expected Results: Paragraphs and sentences which are in "English (US)" would show up highlighted in light red, those in "English (UK)" would be highlighted in light blue, Latin in light yellow, etc. The highlighting would disappear and any in-text manual highlighting would reappear when the auto-highlight was turned off. The auto-highlighting would not carry over into exports to PDF unless it was turned on when the document was being exported. Reproducible: Always User Profile Reset: No Additional Info: Version: 6.3.5.2 Build ID: 1:6.3.5~rc2-0ubuntu0.18.04.1~lo1 CPU threads: 4; OS: Linux 4.15; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3; Locale: en-US (en_US.UTF-8); UI-Language: en-US Calc: threaded
Created attachment 163557 [details] Sample chapter of novel manuscript written with different languages/voices A sample from my novel manuscript with the voice of the narrator (British) and other characters (American) selected in different spell-check languages. When the narrator is speaking in her own words about events I want to use and spell-check in English (UK), but when other characters are quoted or actions that they take are described I want to use English (USA). Also, occasional use of foreign words/phrases such as "maître d’". It would be helpful to be able to graphically show the different languages in use for editing by auto-highlighing. Content is original and copyright by the uploader.
Comment on attachment 163557 [details] Sample chapter of novel manuscript written with different languages/voices Sorry, I had selected only the sample chapter but LibreOffice saved the entire manuscript. Unfortunately I am not able to delete the attachment and re-save, but the chapter which I had edited was chapter 7.
Created attachment 163561 [details] Sample chapter 7 Sample chapter of manuscript written with different languages and voices.
Use case seems tailor made for working with styles. Simply define additional style (Paragraph, or Character) for each "language" in dialog including a highlight/background -or- font color to suit your editing flow. Apply that style while writing--then remove it (i.e. reset to the Default style) when publishing.
(In reply to V Stuart Foote from comment #4) > Use case seems tailor made for working with styles. Exactly. Here is the help https://help.libreoffice.org/6.4/en-US/text/shared/guide/language_select.html?DbPAR=SHARED#bm_id3083278