Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 59076
Typographic en-space printed as squares
Last modified: 2017-05-20 11:30:06 UTC
I created this issue as suggested by the closing remark of issue #58782. The en-space typographic character (U+2002) is not treated as fixed-width space, but instead is displayed as a white square. I'm not sure if it is even possible to enter en-spaces directly in a writer document, but I find them regularly in word documents I receive. It's a bit annoying to have to change these each time to normal or non-braking spaces before I can print the imported documents. I'll attach an example Microsoft Word document that shows this behavior when imported in OpenOffice
Created attachment 32199 [details] Small text file with en-spaces that are not treated correctly
This was tested on Windows 2000 and SuSE Linux 10.0
Reassigned to SBA.
> It's a bit annoying to have to change these each time to normal or non-braking > spaces before I can print the imported documents. ? It should not be necessary to replace the characters. (and btw, I don't get "rectangles", I just get "<whitespace>". Please check whether you get the rectangles in an actual printout/when exporting to PDF/in Page-Preview.
I definitely get "rectangles" on screen, in the exported pdf file and printed on paper. I'll attach a pdf export and a jpg scanned image of the relevant part of the printout, just in case the pdf displays cleanly for you while not for me.
Created attachment 32255 [details] PDF direct export of the test file
Created attachment 32256 [details] Scan of printout of test file
In this case, this is a defect. Does this happen when you use other fonts as well?
ssa: reassign to hdu
In Windows 2000, it happens with every font I select. In Linux, some fonts show the problem, other don't. Am I correct if I assume this has to do whether or not the font has the en-space defined or not ? And that MS-Office treats the en-space special automatically, so the problem doesn't show there ? What's more confusing: I checked in Word. If I choost to display special characters, this famous en-space is displayed by Word as a non-braking space (for which the symbol is a little circle). So word uses the same symbol to show these two different typographic characters. I'm not sure what the best approach in OOo is. I may educate my correspondents to use the correct character to solve my conversion issue. But regardless, it's an issue other people might encounter as well when converting documents from Word to Writer and might cause quite a bit of confusion and annoyance.
> Am I correct if I assume this has to do whether or not the font has the en-space defined or not ? Yes. HDU reminder: we need glyph fallback to different glyphs of the same font.
The typographical spaces (U2000 to U209B) can all be inserted in Open Office (2.02) from the Insert Symbol dialogue if they are defined in the current font. However, if you switch to a font that does not include them, they are displayed as not.def glyphs (rectangles or squares). Serif Page Plus 11 displays these spaces correctly even if the selected font does not contain the typographical spaces.
See this Open Office Writer Forum Thread: http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?p=179638#179638
Hello, we have the same issue since many versions from OOo. But the problem occurs not on all computers. Some show rectangles/squares and some show it without the characters. Why? And what can we do to help these users? With best Regards
Reset assigne to the default "issues@openoffice.apache.org".