Hmmm … !!

Hmmm …

Well, there’s been a busy day!

Bless ’im, Tim popped over, today; mostly because there was a couple of thing’s he wanted to check.

Mostly, we were having to look to see if we couldn’t install both HandBrake and vlc on his Ubuntu laptop.

Which we seemingly could …

But I’m thinking I might just give Movie Night Adrian a call, when Tim’s over next; he’s a touch more familiar with Linux and BSD terminal than I am. Seemingly, there’s a lot of coding needed to just get ’em going …

But at least I was able to give both him and his partner, Adele, a quick ‘How To’, on how to insert various special characters into the OpenOffice.org version of a Word Document.

Mostly because their older kids wanted to find out how to insert an ‘é’*, along with various other characters used in the French alphabet, for their homework.

Which is where it gets both similar, and different, to NeoOffice.

NeoOffice, as I’m sure you’ve probably worked out by now, is a long established — but separate — version of OpenOffice.org, ported to OS X; and as such, NeoOffice can use the regular OS X keyboard shortcuts.

Getting than é, for example, is a case of pressing ‘alt’ and ‘e’, and then ‘e’, again. (You can do the same with ú, á, í and ó. Hitting alt and u gives you an umlaut. Like this; ‘ë’.)

But that’s fine, if you’re using word-processing software, running on OS X; Apple are very insistent that anyone designing commercial software for the Mac platform sticks to their published shortcuts. (Little things, like hitting ⌘ + ‘q’, to quit an application, or ⌘ and ‘c’ to copy something.)

But I’m blowed if I know what the equivalent are, within Windoze, or within Ubuntu.

I mean, beyond the obvious ‘ctrl’ + ‘alt’ + ‘delete’ to force quit a hung Windoze application.

But the Ubuntu version of OpenOffice.org does have one thing in common with NeoOffice; they BOTH have an ‘Insert’ menu. Although given the differences between the two operating systems, they’re in different places; With the Ubuntu version of OpenOffice.org, the ‘Insert’ menu will be in the application’s window. With NeoOffice, and the OS X version of OpenOffice.org, the ‘Insert’ menu — as with the File, Edit and other menu’s — will be in the Menu bar at the top of the screen.

Once the Special character option’s chosen from there, both applications behave in the same way; they’ll offer you the window you can see in the first screen-grab, there.

From there, it’s just a case of picking which character you need to use.

•••••

But let’s move on, shall we?

Shall we?

Yes, lets!

Can I make a confession, here?

¿Can I?

The BBC’s been showing a season of programmes — on BBC 4 — devoted to various bits of electronic 1980s gadgetry.

One of the programmes they’ve trailed quite heavily is called “Micro Men”, and covers the British computer boom, of the early 1980s; with what looks like a slant on the ‘Hearts and Minds’ battle, between Acorn and Sinclair.

Maybe that’s putting it the wrong way …

Because, having grown up, during the 1980s, I’m not actually sure it went like that. Oh, I can remember the huge sales and advertising that both company’s did for their respective machines. Including the coup that Acorn got, in securing the contract for the BBC.

Which, from where I was sitting, made it a lot less fun-looking, than the ZX Spectrum.

After all, the BBC Micro was aimed — primarily — at the educational market. Got a huge government subsidy, with that in mind, in fact.

The Spectrum, on the other hand, was more akin to the XBox or Playstation of its day. With the added bonus that you could programme it make all sorts of weird beeping noises.

Not many, granted. Or not as many as the Beeb.

But certainly enough to keep a lot of teenage boys happily occupied in their bedrooms, for hours!

And not as many as a modern mobile phone.

But I’m of the school of thought that says the ZX Spectrum was quite an important bit of kit.

After all, it was the first home computer that didn’t cost a bundle to buy. Making the idea of a computer in the front room — and two in the bedroom, in my case — something both familiar and acceptable to my generation.

Forget about the disaster that was the Sinclair C5.

For Clive Sinclair — and Acorn’s founder, Chris Curry — that fact a computer is a domestic appliance, is the real legacy.

* Apparently, that little forward pointing accent’s called an ‘acute’ accent. The backwards pointing one’s a ‘grave’, by way of a contrast. And, seemingly, the cedilla, the little wriggly bit used in some alphabets — like this; ‘ç’ — doesn’t count as an accent. And, before you, Adele, Allison and Adrian ask, Tim, no, I don’t know why, either. All I do know is that they’re collectively called Diacritical marks.