Ruby

OpenOffice.org Writer has the function of [ruby|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_character] for Chinese and Japanese. It allows users to add annotative ruby characters to a corresponding Kanji string.

To enter ruby on OpenOffice.org Writer, users usually open Asian Phonetic Guide dialog shown below. However, this dialog is a little bit inconvenient.

Problems or requests

Integration

For example, here is a word "国際連合貿易開発会議" which means [UNCTAD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Conference_on_Trade_and_Development] in English. Now try to add ruby characters to this word in OpenOffice.org Writer. You will get the same result shown in the picture below. As you see, this word are recognized as the combination of 5 words.

Then, you would combine them into 1 word and add ruby characters forcibly like the picture below. However, it results in the following

Seperation

Speration is also impossible in the current Asian Phonetic Guide dialog. For example, here is a word "東京都" which means Tokyo Metropolis. Now try to add ruby characters to this words in OpenOffice.org Writer. You will get the same result shown in the picture below. As you see, this word are recognized as 1 word.

However, in some conditions, you might want to separate this word into

There is an alternate solution that selection

Automatical suggestion of ruby characters

It would be wonderful if OpenOffice.org gave ruby characters for Japanese sentence automatically. That is impossible, but OpenOffice.org could suggest ruby characters by filling out the ruby text entries in Asian Phonetic Guide dialog. This would be very helpful to input ruby text. Sometimes the suggestion might be wrong, but it would not be a big deal because users could still edit ruby text manually in the dialog.

Automatical suggestion of ruby characters can be realized with the help of MS-IME like Japanese_Reconversion. So this feature would be supported only for Windows version at the moment.