StarOffice in French

You can very easily run StarOffice in French. Under Windows, it is done automatically during the installation process. Under Linux, you just have to export the LANG variable with fr_FR, to define French locales. This is not specific to StarOffice, and affects a lot of Linux application (Gnome, dselect,..)

bash, zsh: export DISPLAY=fr_FR
tcsh: setenv DISPLAY=fr_FR

But when in French, the separator in StarOffice is the comma, but on your keyboard you have a point. This is not very handy ! So we aim at replacing the point of the numpad by a comma, as it is done in Excel in French.

Comma under Linux

A very simple solution is to use xmodmap.
Write a little script to launch StarOffice with the following lines :

xmodmap -e 'keycode 91 = KP_Delete comma'
~/StarOffice51/bin/soffice
xmodmap -e 'keycode 91 = KP_Delete KP_Decimal'

This told to X to map the point of the numpad with the comma.

The only problem is that this mapping is done for all the applications running under X during the StarOffice session, and not only for StarOffice.

Another solution proposed by Denis Cardon consist in a small script that switches between comma and decimal point ; just create the script below, and embed it into a launcher ; a simple click will switch from dot to comma ! :

#!/bin/bash
val=`xmodmap -pke | grep "keycode  91 = KP_Delete KP_Decimal"`
echo $val
if [ -n "$val" ]
then
        xmodmap -e 'keycode 91 = KP_Delete comma'
else
        xmodmap -e 'keycode 91 = KP_Delete KP_Decimal'
fi

Comma under Windows

New version !

I have written a program to change the numpad point with a comma when the title of the window starts with “StarOffice”. I am currently improving the interface of this handler.

If you cannot wait, you can use the current version :

Launch loadkbdhook.exe when you start StarOffice.