Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 78463
Alignment in Spreadsheet columns
Last modified: 2013-08-07 15:14:39 UTC
JA->NN: this issue is a duplication of iBIS 111947 In Format->Cell->Alignement: MS Excel allows 3 kinds of Text Direction alignments - left, right and Context. SO has the equivalent Text Flow alignment: left-to-right, right-to-left and Use Superordinate Object Setting. The third option appears to do nothing. I suggest that this option applies the same behavior as the MS Excel 'Context'. Where the text flow is determined by the first strong Left-to-Right or Right-to-Left character. Please check the (iBIS 111947) attached bug file (Open Book1.xls in OOo and MS Office. The text in the second row will appear reversed in OOo.). FT->WH: We cannot use the third option to behave like Excel since "Use superordinate settings" relates to the page (Pge setup) setting. so if the page is set up RTL this means the cell uses RTL and vice versa. Anyway I never really understood what "Context" means in Excel. Please try to explain and I'll see what we can do to "emulate" this setting. WH->FT: sorry for the late reply, my laptop crashed and I have to reinstall and replace my HDD and memory. In excel context is an easy concept, the first character in the cell will indicate the prefered text direction. If the first char is bidi char then the cell will assume RTL text direction if the first char is latin then the cell will assume LTR text direction FT->WH: Now sorry for my very late reply :o( We have a slightly different approach than Excel: In case the page template/layout is RTL every cell is RTL (and vice versa). In case of an Arabic locale every newly opened spreadsheet will have a RTL page layout. TZ->WH: If you can live with the functionality in OOo 2.0, please close this task. WH->FT: I think that would be a worable solution. If this is included in the RTL specification we can close this bug.
retarget to 3.1
CCed: ssa
As discussed with Stephan Schaefer (ssa) the effort to implement this enhancement is pretty high and the current situation seems to be sufficient as said by a Arabic native user (Waleed Hosny). The issue requires file format changes. Therefor this issue will be closed as wontfix.
closing this issue.