Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 6250
MSCompatability: Decimal align places trailing nonnumbers on right of decimal tab
Last modified: 2013-08-07 14:38:26 UTC
This is a tiny issue but one which is giving us a major headache. The problem is that when you open a Word document in Openoffice the decimal tabs do not work in the same way. MS Word assumes that if a decimal point is not present in a number that it is at the end of that number, thus decimal tabs line up a column by the least significant digit. OpenOffice unfortunately center aligns these numbers throwing off all our columns. We can't just left align the columns because they include negative numbers in brackets, the last digit must align vertically regardless of whether a bracket is present or not. In case you haven't guessed this is an accounting firm and this is causing a major problem. Thanks for your time. Richard Blackman
Thanks for a good post Richard. Can you upload a sample file that demonstrates this problem? As a bonus, some screenshots would be great. Thanks again.
Created attachment 2233 [details] Hope this makes things clearer for you.
Created attachment 2301 [details] PNG screenshot of alignment issue.
Duplicated on Win NT 4.0, OO 1.0.1. Decimal aligned tab stops do not recognize numbers in brackets. Hence the alignment uses the whole text ( number plus the brackets ) instead of aligning based on the decimal point of the number without the brackets. I've included a screenshot to help clarify things.
If after a tab to a decimal aligned tab there is any number at all in the following text portion, that number is placed at the decimal tab. Any trailing text including brackets or any chracters are left past the tab position.
Created attachment 2306 [details] example .doc
cmc->ft: A feature request, Word decimal tabs work quite differently and probably better for those trying to align columns of numbers when the text portion after the tab contains a mixture of text and numbers. Final example opened in word and writer clearly demonstrates.
FT->AMA: Wrong owner. Please be so kind to take over, thx.
I don't promise to fix it for OOo2.0, so I set target to "Later". On the other hand we're planning some improvement for decimal tabstops inside tables. During this implementation we'll keep this issue in mind and see what we can achieve (for OOo2.0).