Re: [libreoffice-users] Font versus Character Substitution
Thanks, Brian, that makes perfect sense. I just wanted to be sure that I wasn't doing something wrong, or, at least, inefficient. I don't tend to use spell check very often, so I can just stick with changing the input on the windows task bar. /G. From: Brian Barker b.m.bar...@btinternet.com To: users@global.libreoffice.org Sent: Friday, 17 April 2015, 18:26 Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Font versus Character Substitution At 13:24 17/04/2015 +, Gary Collins wrote: What I was saying is this: When I change input language, I change it using the keyboard/language selector on the windows taskbar. In the post I was responding to, it was suggested that the language selector button (or whatever it's called) at the bottom of the writer window could be used to change input language. However, when I try to use that button, it doesn't present the range of choices that I have from the Windows taskbar. From the Windows taskbar language icon, I can choose from Russian, Greek (polytonic) or English. From the adjacent keyboard icon (with English language selected) I can choose from United Kingdom, Akkadian United Kingdom Extended or United Kingdom Extended - Latin. From the language button at the bottom of the Writer window, the only choice I have is between English (UK) and English (USA). I don't know if it should offer me the same languages as the windows taskbar, or if its purpose is more limited. These are very different things, I think. You need both. o The keyboard choices you have enabled in Windows (and which can be selected in the Windows taskbar) can indeed be described as input languages, since they govern the relationship between the keys you press and the corresponding characters that are transmitted to whatever application you are using (or to Windows itself). Changing this choice potentially modifies the character that you will see when you press any key. o Within a text document (e.g. in LibreOffice Writer), you may want to use a spelling checker and a thesaurus and to have automatic hyphenation. To complete any of these tasks, the application needs to know which language you mean the text to be in - and so how to treat it. You may also wish to set the language of some text as [None] in order to disable these processes. You can set the language in Writer in various ways, since language is a character property, a character style property, and a paragraph style property (but not a paragraph property, although an entire paragraph can be given a language setting using the character property, of course). The indication in the Status Bar is of the effect of all of these settings on the current selection or at the cursor position. If you, say, wish to start typing in Russian in an otherwise English document, you will need to change keyboard setting in Windows and will also wish to change the language setting in Writer. You can do this through a context menu from the Status Bar indication; you may well see only a couple of languages there, but the full set is available via the More... item - leading to the Font tab of the Character dialogue. You will certainly find Greek and Russian there. Note, though, that you may well prefer to set the language property using either character styles or paragraph styles, rather than using the direct character formatting provided through the Status Bar facility. I trust this helps. Brian Barker -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Font versus Character Substitution
I can get the characters I need from the fonts I have, no problem (usually - there have been glitches). What I was saying is this: When I change input language, I change it using the keyboard/language selector on the windows taskbar. In the post I was responding to, it was suggested that the language selector button (or whatever it's called) at the bottom of the writer window could be used to change input language. However, when I try to use that button, it doesn't present the range of choices that I have from the Windows taskbar. From the Windows taskbar language icon, I can choose from Russian, Greek (polytonic) or English. From the adjacent keyboard icon (with English language selected) I can choose from United Kingdom, Akkadian United Kingdom Extended or United Kingdom Extended - Latin. From the language button at the bottom of the Writer window, the only choice I have is between English (UK) and English (USA). I don't know if it should offer me the same languages as the windows taskbar, or if its purpose is more limited. /Gary From: toki kantoor toki.kant...@gmail.com To: users@global.libreoffice.org users@global.libreoffice.org Sent: Friday, 17 April 2015, 2:38 Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Font versus Character Substitution On April 16, 2015 4:44:11 AM PDT, Gary Collins wote: transcriptions from ancient language scripts. If those languages are not listed in Settings Fonts CTL, or Settings Fonts Western, as appropriate, LibO will not handle them correctly. It will randomly substitute your correct glyph from your correct font, with some strange glyph from who knows where. (It even does that when writing medieval English using thorn, and The other obsolete letters of the English alphabet.) I think Ancient CJKV work fine, provided you have the appropriate font, _and_ the glyphs are in the Unicode Base Plane. (I don't remember if LibO supports non base plane glyphs.) (I don't remember if the mu wang manuscript I was reading in LibO used images, or a font.) I'd suggest filing an rfe for all ancient languages you use, if there is an ISO code for them, and also if they aren't yet supported in settings.. You'll need complete locale data for each language. I'm assuming that there is an ISO-360 code for the language. jonathon -- Multilingual ODF Office Suite Support. -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Font versus Character Substitution
At 13:24 17/04/2015 +, Gary Collins wrote: What I was saying is this: When I change input language, I change it using the keyboard/language selector on the windows taskbar. In the post I was responding to, it was suggested that the language selector button (or whatever it's called) at the bottom of the writer window could be used to change input language. However, when I try to use that button, it doesn't present the range of choices that I have from the Windows taskbar. From the Windows taskbar language icon, I can choose from Russian, Greek (polytonic) or English. From the adjacent keyboard icon (with English language selected) I can choose from United Kingdom, Akkadian United Kingdom Extended or United Kingdom Extended - Latin. From the language button at the bottom of the Writer window, the only choice I have is between English (UK) and English (USA). I don't know if it should offer me the same languages as the windows taskbar, or if its purpose is more limited. These are very different things, I think. You need both. o The keyboard choices you have enabled in Windows (and which can be selected in the Windows taskbar) can indeed be described as input languages, since they govern the relationship between the keys you press and the corresponding characters that are transmitted to whatever application you are using (or to Windows itself). Changing this choice potentially modifies the character that you will see when you press any key. o Within a text document (e.g. in LibreOffice Writer), you may want to use a spelling checker and a thesaurus and to have automatic hyphenation. To complete any of these tasks, the application needs to know which language you mean the text to be in - and so how to treat it. You may also wish to set the language of some text as [None] in order to disable these processes. You can set the language in Writer in various ways, since language is a character property, a character style property, and a paragraph style property (but not a paragraph property, although an entire paragraph can be given a language setting using the character property, of course). The indication in the Status Bar is of the effect of all of these settings on the current selection or at the cursor position. If you, say, wish to start typing in Russian in an otherwise English document, you will need to change keyboard setting in Windows and will also wish to change the language setting in Writer. You can do this through a context menu from the Status Bar indication; you may well see only a couple of languages there, but the full set is available via the More... item - leading to the Font tab of the Character dialogue. You will certainly find Greek and Russian there. Note, though, that you may well prefer to set the language property using either character styles or paragraph styles, rather than using the direct character formatting provided through the Status Bar facility. I trust this helps. Brian Barker -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Font versus Character Substitution
Hi,thanks for this, I hadn't noticed it before (or, at least, I hadn't realised that the input language could be changed here). However, I'm using windows 7 and I have Russian and Greek Polytonic keyboards enabled, as well as some custom variants of English to use for transcriptions from ancient language scripts. All of these are available from the Windows toolbar, but they don't seem to be accessible via the language block at the bottom of Writer. Should they be? Do I have to enable them somehow in LO? Or is this for something else? Thanks,/Gary From: Paul D. Mirowsky p_mirow...@bentaxna.com To: users@global.libreoffice.org Sent: Monday, 23 March 2015, 20:33 Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Font versus Character Substitution Are you using the language block at the bottom of Writer to change language when writing a new paragraph in a different language? It should be displaying your default language until you change it. Hope this helps. -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Font versus Character Substitution
On April 16, 2015 4:44:11 AM PDT, Gary Collins wote: transcriptions from ancient language scripts. If those languages are not listed in Settings Fonts CTL, or Settings Fonts Western, as appropriate, LibO will not handle them correctly. It will randomly substitute your correct glyph from your correct font, with some strange glyph from who knows where. (It even does that when writing medieval English using thorn, and The other obsolete letters of the English alphabet.) I think Ancient CJKV work fine, provided you have the appropriate font, _and_ the glyphs are in the Unicode Base Plane. (I don't remember if LibO supports non base plane glyphs.) (I don't remember if the mu wang manuscript I was reading in LibO used images, or a font.) I'd suggest filing an rfe for all ancient languages you use, if there is an ISO code for them, and also if they aren't yet supported in settings.. You'll need complete locale data for each language. I'm assuming that there is an ISO-360 code for the language. jonathon -- Multilingual ODF Office Suite Support. -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Font versus Character Substitution
Also you can try to create your own styles for each language you are using. Selecting a language for a Paragraph Style 1. Place the cursor in the paragraph whose paragraph style you want to edit. 2. Open the context menu and select *Edit Paragraph Style*. This opens the *Paragraph Style* dialog. 3. Select the *Font* tab. 4. Select the *Language* and click *OK*. All paragraphs formatted with the current paragraph style will have the selected language. https://help.libreoffice.org/Writer/Creating_New_Styles_From_Selections Hope this helps. On 3/23/2015 1:38 PM, CVAlkan wrote: Hi: I’ve been fighting with multiple language documents in LibreOffice for some time, and am determined to understand what’s going on. To that end I have a few questions and some thoughts. My intent is either to have someone point out that I’m doing it all wrong, or to star some sort of conversation about how to improve things. So here goes … According to the Document Foundation Wiki’s Localization Guide for LibreOffice, versions of LibreOffice (and I’m particularly concerned with Writer here) running on Unix/Linux rely on the fontconfig utility to suggest a font replacement when a requested font is not available. Apparently LibreOffice uses its own routines under Windows. First Question: Is this still true in current versions? According to the documentation (man pages and such) for FontConfig, that utility matches fonts using a very specific set of font characteristics that are weighted in the following order: foundry, charset, family, lang, etc. With the advent of “free” fonts over the past decade, I’ve found that many – even most – such fonts have no foundry listed. Since that is the most heavily weighted attribute in the matching process, and since null is never equal to null, the matches returned are sometimes inappropriate. Second Question: Is FontConfig called by LibreOffice only when a complete font is missing, or if the font in question just doesn’t have some particular character(s)? This is particularly of interest with fonts having Complex Text Layouts. Although it is possible to set a CTL replacement for fonts in Writer (e.g. Tools | Options | LibreOffice Writer | Basic Fonts (CTL), Format | Character and so forth), this is always limited to a single font, which isn’t always realistic. As an example, let’s say we go to Tools | Options | Language Settings | Languages, check off “Complex Text Layout” and specify the language as Thai (again, this can only be done for one language at a time). If we use a font such as FreeSerif that has all the characters needed for both English and Thai (as well as most other languages you’re likely to run across), everything works just fine. On the other hand, if we use a free Google font such as Droid Sans (which has no foundry property), we get into trouble. Apparently in order to keep fonts to a reasonable size, Google offers additional unicode pages as separate font files: Droid Sans Armenian, Droid Sans Ethiopic, Droid Sans Thai, etc. If the current font is Droid Sans and some Thai characters are typed, fontconfig does NOT return Droid Sans Thai, but rather (seems to) return the first font in which it locates the requested language. Of course, this can be corrected for ONE font with Tools | Options | LibreOffice Writer | Basic Fonts (CTL), but if more than one font is used and neither is a so-called “pan-unicode” font, you must go through some annoying machinations to get things working correctly (this can be done with character styles, of course, but that can’t be considered anything other than a work-around). Character styles were really not meant for this – that’s what selecting a font is supposed to do. All of this tends to make creation of bi-lingual documents, particularly those using CTL, less flexible than normal single language document creation – sprinkling a document with multiple documents is of course generally considered a bit tacky, but there are legitimate reasons for doing so. Creation of documents that use more than one language (and yes, I’ve done that) is even more tedious; if more than one CTL language is used (e.g. mixing Arabic and Hebrew, or Thai and Arabic) it’s a very difficult, if not impossible task. Could this perhaps be the real underlying reason a middle-east peace agreement can’t be reached? Is it just because there’s no way to write it down. (Sorry – I know this isn’t the place for politics, but the problem seems real enough to mention). Even officially sanctioned free fonts can be problematic. The government of Thailand, for instance, in an effort to bring some standardization to official documents and avoid font piracy, has specified a set of thirteen customized free fonts – SIPA.zip contains these – but none of these has any foundry property defined. They are quite suitable for documents mixing Thai and English, but don’t help if some third language is introduced into a Writer document as well,
Re: [libreoffice-users] Font versus Character Substitution
Are you using the language block at the bottom of Writer to change language when writing a new paragraph in a different language? It should be displaying your default language until you change it. Hope this helps. On 3/23/2015 1:38 PM, CVAlkan wrote: Hi: I’ve been fighting with multiple language documents in LibreOffice for some time, and am determined to understand what’s going on. To that end I have a few questions and some thoughts. My intent is either to have someone point out that I’m doing it all wrong, or to star some sort of conversation about how to improve things. So here goes … According to the Document Foundation Wiki’s Localization Guide for LibreOffice, versions of LibreOffice (and I’m particularly concerned with Writer here) running on Unix/Linux rely on the fontconfig utility to suggest a font replacement when a requested font is not available. Apparently LibreOffice uses its own routines under Windows. First Question: Is this still true in current versions? According to the documentation (man pages and such) for FontConfig, that utility matches fonts using a very specific set of font characteristics that are weighted in the following order: foundry, charset, family, lang, etc. With the advent of “free” fonts over the past decade, I’ve found that many – even most – such fonts have no foundry listed. Since that is the most heavily weighted attribute in the matching process, and since null is never equal to null, the matches returned are sometimes inappropriate. Second Question: Is FontConfig called by LibreOffice only when a complete font is missing, or if the font in question just doesn’t have some particular character(s)? This is particularly of interest with fonts having Complex Text Layouts. Although it is possible to set a CTL replacement for fonts in Writer (e.g. Tools | Options | LibreOffice Writer | Basic Fonts (CTL), Format | Character and so forth), this is always limited to a single font, which isn’t always realistic. As an example, let’s say we go to Tools | Options | Language Settings | Languages, check off “Complex Text Layout” and specify the language as Thai (again, this can only be done for one language at a time). If we use a font such as FreeSerif that has all the characters needed for both English and Thai (as well as most other languages you’re likely to run across), everything works just fine. On the other hand, if we use a free Google font such as Droid Sans (which has no foundry property), we get into trouble. Apparently in order to keep fonts to a reasonable size, Google offers additional unicode pages as separate font files: Droid Sans Armenian, Droid Sans Ethiopic, Droid Sans Thai, etc. If the current font is Droid Sans and some Thai characters are typed, fontconfig does NOT return Droid Sans Thai, but rather (seems to) return the first font in which it locates the requested language. Of course, this can be corrected for ONE font with Tools | Options | LibreOffice Writer | Basic Fonts (CTL), but if more than one font is used and neither is a so-called “pan-unicode” font, you must go through some annoying machinations to get things working correctly (this can be done with character styles, of course, but that can’t be considered anything other than a work-around). Character styles were really not meant for this – that’s what selecting a font is supposed to do. All of this tends to make creation of bi-lingual documents, particularly those using CTL, less flexible than normal single language document creation – sprinkling a document with multiple documents is of course generally considered a bit tacky, but there are legitimate reasons for doing so. Creation of documents that use more than one language (and yes, I’ve done that) is even more tedious; if more than one CTL language is used (e.g. mixing Arabic and Hebrew, or Thai and Arabic) it’s a very difficult, if not impossible task. Could this perhaps be the real underlying reason a middle-east peace agreement can’t be reached? Is it just because there’s no way to write it down. (Sorry – I know this isn’t the place for politics, but the problem seems real enough to mention). Even officially sanctioned free fonts can be problematic. The government of Thailand, for instance, in an effort to bring some standardization to official documents and avoid font piracy, has specified a set of thirteen customized free fonts – SIPA.zip contains these – but none of these has any foundry property defined. They are quite suitable for documents mixing Thai and English, but don’t help if some third language is introduced into a Writer document as well, particularly if the third language also requires CTL. That isn’t actually far-fetched, as they have neighbors that use CTL scripts. Has anyone given much thought to permitting finer-grained control of CTL font substitution – e.g. making the CTL font substitutions page similar to the Options | LibreOffice | Fonts page used for general font substitution of missing
Re: [libreoffice-users] Font versus Character Substitution
On 23/03/15 17:38, CVAlkan wrote: First Question: Is this still true in current versions? I _think_ so. Since that is the most heavily weighted attribute in the matching process, and since null is never equal to null, the matches returned are sometimes inappropriate. Sometimes? I'd suggest that the returns are always inappropriate. On the other hand, if we use a free Google font such as Droid Sans (which has no foundry property), we get into trouble. The scenario you describe is precisely why I have said since at least 2001, that the only way to ensure that the glyphs are right, is to use language specific styles. You can not get away with setting English, Arabic, and Korean in the same style, and have things show up correctly. That works if, and only if one uses a pan-Unicode font for all three languages and writing systems. If you want Arabic to display properly, then all three fonts in the style have to be the Arabic font. If you want Korean to display properly, then all three have to be set to the same font. This applies regardless of language writing system combination you are using. return the first font in which it locates the requested language. The order of precedence is Writing System, then specific glyphs, with a slight preference for the precomposed glyph, even if you originally did not use a precomposed glyph. FWIW, you need to turn both CJKV CTL on, regardless of what writing system is being used --- even if writing English. ( æ, and similar letter constructions require both CTL CJKV features.) Character styles were really not meant for this – that’s what selecting a font is supposed to do. Character styles fill in the holes that paragraph styles create. Also useful for one or two words in a different language, or the same language, but a different writing system. Has anyone given much thought to permitting finer-grained control of CTL font substitution IMNSHO, the optimal solution would be to have styles be both language and writing system dependent. – e.g. making the CTL font substitutions page similar to the Options | LibreOffice | Fonts page used for general font substitution of missing fonts. In other words, permitting multiple fonts to have substitutions defined? The bad workaround is to create a set of character styles, that have the correct font for each set of glyph(s), and then write a macro that basically changes each glyph in the document to that of the character style for the glyph. I apologize if this sounds like a rant; it's not intended to be But it bringing up some non-optimal things that have been around since LibreOffice 0.x was released. jonathon * English - detected * English * English javascript:void(0); -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Font versus Character Substitution
On 23/03/15 20:46, Paul D. Mirowsky wrote: Also you can try to create your own styles for each language you are using. What was described happens even when when language-specific styles are used, but the font(s) associated with the style omits the required glyphs. jonathon -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
