Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 57426
Wrong default font for Greek, full width Asian font is chosen
Last modified: 2009-07-13 08:50:10 UTC
In a default installation of OpenOffice.org, when you write in Greek (for example, in Writer), the default font chosen is an Asian full-width font. This Asian font 1. has Greek characters due to a Japanese/Korean standard requiring them. 2. however it is full width (spacing is to big for western languages) 3. however it lacks characters with accents (they do not appear on screen) Free/open-source fonts with Greek characters are 1. FreeFonts (FreeSans, FreeSerif, FreeMono), available by default with most Linux distributions 2. MgOpen fonts (MgOpen Canonica, MgOpen Moderna, MgOpen Cosmetica, MgOpen Modata), available by default in Ubuntu Linux. Fonts found at http://www.ellak.gr/fonts/mgopen/ <a href="http://util.openoffice.org/source/browse/util/officecfg/registry/data/org/openoffice/VCL.xcu">VCL.xcu </a> does not have a section for Greek. Adding such a section and including Greek fonts appears to solve the problem. However, when you choose from the font menu a font to display greek text, and this font does not have greek characters, OOo falls back to the Asian font. According to the last comment at <a href="http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=16746">bug 16746</a>, "Greek characters have been treated wrong in the past (as CTL chars) see also issue 30465. This will finally work in OO.o 1.1.3 (not yet available). Considering issue as fixed." I am not sure if there is a regression here. I have created a custom VCL.xcu which includes a greek font (FreeSans) in every field for the "en" and "el" sections. When I choose a font that does not have Greek for some Greek text, the Asia font is chosen.
Created attachment 31218 [details] Demonstration of writing Greek with default font (also shows correct version)
Created attachment 31219 [details] Document used to produce the previous screenshot. Has the Greek alphabet with "default" and proper Greek fonts.
Description of screenshot ========================= I am using the latest Build of OOo, as provided by Pavel, at ftp://ftp.linux.cz/pub/localization/OpenOffice.org/devel/680/SRC680_m137/Build-1/OOo_SRC680_m137_LinuxIntel_install_el_deb.tar.gz The behaviour is similar to the English build. For example, I get the same behaviour with Ubuntu 5.10. a. Lines 1, 2 Here you can notice that characters are missing; there are characters that have accents on them. The Asian font chosen here conforms to a Japanese/Korean standard that requires Greek characters, however apparently it does not require greek characters with accents. There was a discussion on this at the fontconfig mailing list (http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/fontconfig/) in September (due to some issue, archiving of the list stops at August). b. Lines 3-6 (default font) and 7-10 (FreeSans) In line 3, the asian font is used for all characters apart from Omega In line 4, some letters are shown with the asian font. In line 5, all but pi (π) is shown with the asian font. In line 6, all but one character is even shown. In lines 7-10 you can see the correct display of the Greek text corresponding to 3-6.
Relevant bugs: 1. https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4639 Fontconfig (font configuration in Linux distributions and more) had a bad preference list for the display of fonts, giving priority to Asian fonts. This has been fixed. My system has a patched version of the configuration file, with a fixed preference order. 2. https://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2374 The same bug noted in Ubuntu. There is a long discussion with more details. Unfortunatelly it does appear to fix the problem.
To sum up, the issue here is that when OOo tries to display Greek and the currently selected font does not have Greek characters, a fallback to an Asian font takes place which is inappropriate for Modern Greek. I have no idea how to influence this internal behaviour; this appears to be the core of the problem. It is possible to get OOo to choose Greek fonts by adding a section for Greek ("el") to VCL.xcu. This would fix the issue when the end-user uses the Greek locale. However, when the default locale is other than Greek, (such as English, "en"), and the font does not have Greek characters, the problem appears. This is a common occurence for different configurations that end-users have. In fontconfig, we placed free (open-source) fonts with Greek characters higher than the CJK fonts (see https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4639) which solves the problem. How can this be achieved in OOo?
This bug makes the Greek help files unreadable in openoffice 2.0.x in linux. The font used in the help component does not render the Greek text properly. See screenshot at http://osdn.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/hop/oohelp.png
Sorry the previous lin is broken: new link with the screenshot at: http://ovh.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/hop/oohelp.png
This issues has been resolved in the current version of OpenOffice.org. Close issue.
Closed.