Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 15206
Soft formatting also for the Edit Engine
Last modified: 2013-08-07 15:21:02 UTC
After this report, I will attach two Impress documents that can be useful to evidence the problem I am experiencing. Both them consist of 5 slides extracted from the ones I have used for a university course. canale_radiomobile.sxi uses Luxi Sans fonts; canale_radiomobile_arial.sxi is the same document, but uses Arial fonts. Let us consider these two documents on Mandrake Linux 9.1 (i586) and on mswindowsxp. On MDK I have installed the OOo 1.0.2 bundled with the distribution, OOo 1.1Beta, and OOo1.1Beta2; on OOo1.1* I have installed the Arial fonts; on OOo1.1Beta I am using a fixed version of opens___.ttf (the same one that is bundled with OOo1.1Beta2). On mswinxp I have installed OOo 1.1Beta and OOo1.1Beta2; moreover, I have replaced \windows\fonts\opens___.ttf with the corresponding fonts file bundled with OOo1.1Beta2 and I have installed the Luxi Sans fonts in \windows\fonts Both the documents that will be attached have been prepared with OOo1.1Beta (the *first* beta) on MDK 9.1. They are formatted the same way both on OOo102 and OOo1.1Beta. But they are not formatted the same way on OOo102 and OOo1.1Beta2: as an example, let us consider the last slide ("My Slide 74") of canale_radiomobile.sxi, and, in particular, the end of the first sentence of the text and the "dot x" formula object. On OOo1.1Beta2 the text line is evidently shorter w.r.t. OOo102 and OOo1.1Beta. This is a problem especially if, as in this case, I need to mix text and equations, as the text object cannot contain a formula object (mspowerpoint has the same limitation) and hence the placement of formulas cannot be related to the text words. Further looks at the attached documents can evidence that, on OOo1.1Beta2, also the line spacing is not the same of OOo102 and OOo1.1Beta. Similar problems can be evidenced also for the "Arial" version of the same document, i.e. canale_radiomobile_arial.sxi Another problem: OOo1.1Beta2 does not format that documents the same way on Linux and on mswinxp: if I fix the problem above on MDK, there is a formatting problem on mswinxp, and vice versa. On OOo1.1Beta I was not experiencing these problems. I hope that these problems can be fixed and that the final 1.1 version will handle fonts about the same way OOo1.1Beta did, because these problems are apparently minor, but they affect - people that have already prepared documents with OOo 1.0.x and want to upgrade to OOo 1.1 - people that may have to show slides also on an environment different from the one used to prepare them - people that want to distribute the prepared documents both to Linux and mswin users Thank you for your time, Marco Pratesi
Created attachment 6595 [details] A five-slides presentation using Luxi Sans fonts
Created attachment 6596 [details] A five-slides presentation using Arial fonts
Reassigned to Christian.
Please tell me which desktop and which windowmanager do you use. I use 'gnome 2.2.0.1-4' with 'metacity 2.4.34-3' and everything works fine.
Sorry I wrote the comment in the wrong issue. I reopen the issue.
I use KDE 3.1 on MDK 9.1 (with all official updates applied). But I have the same problem with Gnome 2.2 on MDK 9.1: just now I have launched Gnome 2.2 (Gnome 2.2.0, Metacity 2.4.34) from another virtual console (X :1 and then startgnome) and on the second display I have opened the attached document with OOo 1.1Beta2; there is just the same problem. Furthermore, there is an analogous problem on mswinxp: also on mswinxp, the attached documents are not formatted the same way on 1.1Beta and on 1.1Beta2. And, finally (and this is the worst problem), the same document is formatted differently on Linux and mswinxp, even though all used fonts are available (installed) both on Linux and mswinxp. Alas, this problem makes OOo 1.1Beta2 practically not usable for production, as, alas, almost everyone has to deal also with mswindows users. Alas, it seems that fonts handling is rather broken on OOo 1.1Beta2, please look also at issue 15171. Marco Pratesi
Curiously, it seems that the formatting is even different if the fonts are installed on the systems (msttcorefonts package on MDK 9.1) instead of being installed on the share/fonts directory of the OOo installation :-??? (I have just tried on another MDK 9.1 installation where I have installed the msttcorefonts, too). IMHO, further investigation is needed about this issue, I will try to have a better understanding of the problem as soon as I will have a bit more time to do this. Marco Pratesi
set to new
You can add fonts to OOo with the spadmin tool. You find the tool in the program directory of the office '<OOo-path>/program'. - start the tool - click on font - click on add - browse to the path of the fonts you want to add. - select the fonts (or click on select all) - click on ok.
On Linux, Luxi Sans do not need to be installed, as they are already present on the system (Mandrake 9.1). On mswindows, I have installed Luxi Sans through the control panel of mswindows. Hence, there is no need to install the Luxi Sans fonts. W.r.t. the Arial fonts, on mswindows they do not need to be installed, as they are already present on the system. On Linux, Arial fonts are not present on the system, but I have noted that, with OOo 1.1, TTFonts can be installed simply copying them in share/fonts and restarting OOo, and this is the way I have followed on Linux boxes without the msttcorefonts package installed (anyway, I usually install that package, too). Hence, the problem does not seem to be related with the spadmin tool. Curiously, I have noted that the problem I have noted is really big only on the computer I use at home (I have to investigate about the setup of that computer): I have tried on other installations (other MDK 9.1 installations) and there is not any serious problem w.r.t. the *horizontal* size of fonts, that is *almost* the same as with 1.0 and 1.1Beta1. But there is still a bit of difference about the interline (vertical) spacing between 1.0 and 1.1Beta2. Summarizing: the problem is not as big as it appeared to me at the beginning, but it is not completely absent; I would not close it with "worksforme", as it does not seem to be completely correctly working. If you want, I can attach you the corresponding PDF documents to highlight the differences between 1.0 and 1.1Beta2 and between Linux and mswindows (right now I cannot cross-check on mswindows, as I'm running on a Linux workstation). Marco Pratesi
Created attachment 7161 [details] PDF export - Luxi Sans fonts - OOo 1.1Beta2 for Linux
Created attachment 7162 [details] PDF export - Luxi Sans fonts - OOo 1.1Beta2 for mswindows (xp home)
Created attachment 7163 [details] PDF export - Arial fonts (msttcorefonts package) - OOo 1.1Beta2 for Linux
Created attachment 7164 [details] PDF export - Arial fonts - OOo 1.1Beta2 for mswindows (xp home)
As you can see looking at these four PDF attachments, formatting is not exactly the same on Linux and on mswindows (xp home). Can you please check if you obtain the same formattings on Linux and mswindows? Marco Pratesi
I reopen the issue
I can see some small differents in the .PDF files. Please have a look.
I attach another .sxi test document (consisting of two slides) and the PDF exports obtained with OOo 1.0.2 (the RPM version bundled with Mandrake 9.1), OOo 1.1Beta1 (the official binaries for Linux), OOo 1.1rc2 (compiled by me on Mandrake 9.1 from the sources tarball, but official binaries behave the same way from this point of view). The document uses Luxi Sans fonts; I have installed the Luxi fonts through spadmin on all the above OOo installations (1.0.2mdk, 1.1Beta1, 1.1rc2). It can observed that OOo 1.0 and 1.1Beta1 format the slides almost the same way, while OOo 1.1rc2 formats the slides rather differently from OOo 1.0. In particular, looking at the PDF exports, it seems that horizontal spacing of fonts and vertical spacing of lines have sensibly changed, and this implies that many slides have to be modified to obtain a correct formatting on OOo 1.1rc2.
Created attachment 8183 [details] A test document consisting of two slides
Created attachment 8184 [details] PDF export obtained through OOo 1.0
Created attachment 8185 [details] PDF export obtained through OOo 1.1Beta1
Created attachment 8186 [details] PDF export obtained through OOo 1.1rc2
The text breaking in the example documents is slightly different between the beta2 and rc samples. Probably because nowadays we use the system's /usr/lib/libfreetype which is often compiled with different options compared to the one we originally supplied. When these things cause even slight rounding differences the problem shows up: A text that is 100000 units wide on one system may fit into a line while the same text where a different font subsystem calculates a width of 100001 units on the other system may need a line break. The underlying problem is that "hard formatting" should always be avoided because even the slightest disturbances can cause unexpected results. On the other hand there is a feature in Writer, that would make it possible to use "soft formatting", which is missing in the EditEngine: Treating embedded objects like formulas as characters. HDU->CGU: Allowing better "soft formatting" also in the EditEngine by adding the features like "treat object as character" etc. could avoid this problem very nicely. Please work with product management, the graphics team and MT on the required feature tasks for this. HDU->Pratesi: Consider using the Writer for more complex layout tasks in the meantime. You would get the better layout features of the Writer and still be able to embed the Writer docs into the Impress sheets.
Hi Bettina according to the last comment from Herbert we need a feature about soft formating in the edit engine. Please have a look and ask Herbert if you have any questions about the needed feature.
This feature request is pre-approved for 'Office later'.
To grep the issues easier via "requirements" I put the issues currently lying on my owner to the owner "requirements".