https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=155274
Bug ID: 155274
Summary: Special Character dialog should support, and default
to, no-direct-formatting insertion
Product: LibreOffice
Version: 7.4.5.1 release
Hardware: All
OS: All
Status: UNCONFIRMED
Severity: minor
Priority: medium
Component: LibreOffice
Assignee: [email protected]
Reporter: [email protected]
At the moment, when we use the Special Characters dialog, we choose a specific
font, and a character from that font.
In one sense, this is unavoidable - as one can't insert a character abstractly,
and not all fonts have glyphs for all characters.
In another sense, however, this is wrong: A character is not a specific font's
glyph for that character. Fixing a specific font for the inserted character is
DF, direct formatting - and it currently cannot (?) be avoided. This kind of DF
makes our documents brittle and easy to break: When one changes the font in the
text's style, the special character will not change along with the style.
(There is also the question of text following the special character which I
will open a second bug about).
This can be ameliorated manually, by selecting the inserted special character
and choosing to clear direct formatting; but the user should really not have to
do this. It should, in fact, be the default action to insert a character with
no DF.
The dialog currently doesn't offer an option to do this. It should. This could
be:
* A checkbox which grays out the font selection
* A default entry in the font selection drop down which is a non-font, e.g.
"(normal text)" or "(no font specified)". I believe that's what MS Office uses.
The problem is compounded with the most-recent-symbols available in the
menu-bar on the Format toolbar: One can't even know which font is used for
those characters. That should be rectified in one of the following ways:
* Only keep non-DF-ed characters in the most-recently-used slots
* Indicate slots which override the font, e.g. with some kind of background
color or hatching, and also with tooltip text when hovering.
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