Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 55083
Input of thin spaces in text mode
Last modified: 2013-02-07 22:39:31 UTC
I would like to have an easy way to input thin spaces. Insert->special character does not provide any special spaces for most fonts (I didn't find anyone). But they are recommended in some cases for typesetting e.\,g. of abbreviations, dates (26.\,9.\,2005 using LaTeX syntax) and others. Such a space produces an ugly box as if OOo doesn't know anything about it.
Reassigned to requirements.
still a requirement for 2.0.2
someone might mark #11849 as duplicate of this (I don't have the bugzilla rights)
#55083 is NOT specific to the writer app. #11849 is NOT a duplicate, #11849 is about menus and dialogues while #55083 is about easy entry of special unicode characters within the document itself.
Let me add: First, wow, this request if for OOo 1.1.4 (five years ago), and it's not fixed even in 3.2. Ok, I'd like to demand multiple spaces also. To begin with, Unicode has a rich collection of spaces. There is another request that deals with OOo treating those right. Even for character sets where these spaces do not exist, OOo could synthetically compute them. For example (using mostly German phrases) a "Geviert" (em-space) should correspond to the font-size (with of an 'M' typically). In addition to that there should be a thin-space with half of the width, plus possible "Achtelgeviert" (1/8), "Viertelgeviert" (1/4), and "Drittelgeviert" (1/3). Even the very old UNIX formula editor "eqn" had two widths of spaces, nemely '~' a space, and '^', a thin space. So back to Unicode: I'll list some of the obvious spaces known in Unicode (see: "Mapping of Unicode characters" in Wikipedia): U+200B zero-width space U+200C zero-width non-joiner U+200D zero-width joiner U+0020 space U+00A0 non-break space U+2060 word-joiner U+2002 En-space U+2003 Em-space U+2006 Six-Per-Em space U+2007 figure space U+2008 punctuation space U+2009 Thin space U+200A Hair space U+205F Mathematical space U+202F Narrow no-break space U+2062 invisible times U+2063 invisible separator (the last two used for mathematical expressions) Related to spacing might be also: U+2000 En-quad U+2001 Em-quad U+2011 Non-breaking hyphen U+00AD Soft hyphen So OOo should know about the meaning of these characters when doing formatting (line breaks, hyphenation, etc.) and searching, but should also provide an easy wa for users to use (i.e.: enter) such "characters". Final note: For languages that do not use "left-to-right, top-to-bottom" text align ment, there may be more spacial "characters" to consider. Forgive the simple-minded European ;-)