So I’ve installed a secondary language with YAST and that seemed to go ok, but I can’t find the information in the documentation about how to switch between languages, say in an OpenOffice doc or in the browser?
Is this on KDE4 or Gnome?
In KDE4 use ‘systemsettings’ to configure the language. The next program will start in the chosen language.
Sorry, using KDE.
Will try your suggestion.
Is there a hotkey combination to switch back and forth on the fly, like with Windoz?
Your suggestion changes KDE all right, but Open Office and Firefox are still in the Primary language, even after restarting the programs and also after rebooting the computer.
Maybe what I really want to do is change the language on the keyboard so that I can type the special characters of the secondary language in documents and searches?
Got it!
I am able to switch the keyboard between the two language layouts.
The settings are in “Configure Desktop” > “Regional and Language” > “Keyboard Layout”
Excellent!
Thanks for your help.
When you change ‘language’ you change the language in with messages, button/tab titles, etc are displayed. Due to the Open Source nature of Linux every (set of) programs more or less solve this on its own. That means that when you tell KDE youe want to see its text in a language, OO or FF do not know that. A central place is the LANG environment variable. A lot of programs honour that. You can set it the file .profile in your home directory (examples are in the file).
When you change the keyboard layout, you change the way you input characters using the keyboard. You found out already how to do that.
It is important to understand that the above are two different things.