How do I persuade OpenOffice Writer to move the cursor when a space is typed at the end of a document? It's driving my neighbour mad and he's kindly sharing this madness with me.
When typing a document, the cursor simply doesn't react when the spacebar is pressed but moves ahead once a letter key is pressed. What this means is that my neighbour doesn't know whether the software has registered the space bar until he carries on typing and has to go back to insert spaces if it hasn't (there's a separate issue here about the spacebar on his keyboard).
I found what I thought was
the answer but while this has stopped the problem of getting multiple spaces when he presses the spacebar repeatedly - unsure whether it registered the first, second or
nth time - the cursor still doesn't move until a character is typed (at which point it shows the space and the character).
I know this all sounds like a very minor niggle but I can only say that it's hard to appreciate just how annoying it is until you've experienced it for yourself.
There must be a way to get OpenOffice Writer to behave in what I'd think is a more user-friendly manner but I just can't find it.
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One obvious workaround would be to turn on non-printing characters. If you see a new dot, a space was entered. After a few months, I don't even notice the clutter and my anal retentive side loves knowing there's no stray tabs or spaces.
posted by cowbellemoo at 9:20 AM on October 24, 2008