Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 51508
Font Spacing Inconsistent After Zoom
Last modified: 2017-05-20 10:30:37 UTC
The spacing between characters seems to become rather variable and unpleasant after zooming in or out. Some letter pairs get squashed together while others have too much space between them. I'll attach a picture of what I'm talking about. The top half of the image is from Excel and the bottom is from OOo Calc. The font is Helvetica 9 pt and the document is zoomed to 71% normal size. One of the words is "Englewood". OOo jams the "g" and the "l" right up against each other and leaves a large gap between the "l" and the "e". This makes it look like two words: Engl ewood.
Created attachment 27671 [details] Comparison of text between Excel and Calc
You'll also notice that in the word "Nichols" that the "i" is jammed up against the "N". And the first three letters of "Avenue" are jammed so tightly as to be almost illegible. This is a minor annoyance but I see it fairly often because I often work with documents that are typically shrunk to about 80-85%. The effect is quite noticable at that zoom level.
Hi nedal_da, can you please specify the OOo version for which you see this problem? In 1.1.4 and 2.0 (1.9.m104) English version WIN XP: [680m104(Build8913)] there is no problem to select "Print only selected sheet" in Tools/Options/OOo Calc/Print (pls, see screenshot!). This preselection was permanent for all further prints. So I do not understand your problem. May be you want tat preselection only for special documents and not general? Please contribute a distinct specification for your problem! Thanks, Rainer
Sorry for SPAM, wrong issue! Please ignore "Additional comments from rainerbielefeld Sun Jul 3 09:57:36 -0700 2005"!
I figured it out, and this does appear to be a bug. The formatting in the cells was set differently than it would be in a new spreadsheet. Here's how you can recreate it using the same text I was using: 1. Open up Calc 2. Type "Cisco Englewood Office" in a cell 3. Widen the column a bit larger than is necessary to hold the text 4. Right-click on the cell and select Format Cells 5. Go to the Alignment tab and set the horizontal alignment to Left 6. On the same page, select the "Wrap text automatically" checkbox 7. Hit OK and return to the document 8. Resize the column so that the rightmost column boundary is squarely over the "e" in Office There you go, bunged up text. Let me know if you can recreate it. I may not be doing a good enough job describing how to do it. Thanks, John
Hi Niklas, as discussed Target later and yours. Frank
I’m running OOo 2.0.1 in Windows XP SP2 build 2600. I followed the steps as described by neiby. What happens is that “Cisco Englewood” is not longer visible in the cell, all you can see is “Office” and a little arrow at the rightmost column boundary. If I resize the height of the cell, then everything appears as normal (that is that the contents in the cell appears as follows): “Cisco Englewood Office”
Very interesting! I hadn't tried playing around with this since the official release. I just tried it again and it is definitely fixed. The current behavior is not what I was seeing prior to the official release. I'll have to go open up some of the other Excel worksheets I have that I know looked bad before. Thanks for the update. It reminded me to try this again.
This issue is replicated in issue 73967 and is still apparent in 2.4 Kerning is messed up when zooming applied, also line weights vary, see attachment (id=52703)
Created attachment 52742 [details] kerning problem when zooming in calc
The root cause behind all this is that Calc formats its cells on an abstract reference device that is independent from the printer, display, and other physical devices. This approach allows e.g. line breaks to be independent of the zoom level. To get the best possible text quality the layout should be done on exactly the same device that is the display target. From the point of view of the issue reporter the screen is this target device .
In other words, it has to be fixed, right? A lot of people zoom their spreadsheets, and it looks awful with zoom applied, especially when compared to the competition, who do it perfectly.
I agree that this needs to be fixed. I opened this bug three years ago. I rarely use OOo Calc anymore, but for a long time I was using Excel regularly and I usually had my spreadsheets zoomed. I was always surprised at how bad those same spreadsheets looked in Calc. I know the OOo developers are extremely busy, but I'm surprised that this is still an issue.
This flaw is still unfixed in the latest Calc version (3.1.1) I've seen it on 3 different brands of computers over several years now. Why is there no action on this?
If I check "Use printer metrics for text formatting" in the Options-->Calc-->General tab, this problem is solved. Suggestion: set this option to "on" as default in new installations.
This has to be fixed. Dancing characters look unprofessional.
Fixed in CWS "dr78".
Reassigning to QA for verification.
re-reassigning
Seen ok in cws dr78 -> verified