Hyphen Printing Problem in Writer??

users
#1

Hi:

I recently installed Version: 4.3.0.3 Build ID:
08ebe52789a201dd7d38ef653ef7a48925e7f9f7 on 64 bit Ubuntu 14.04, and noticed
a problem that I'm pretty sure I had seen in some version of LO back in the
3.x series, but which seems to have returned.

When printing documents with hyphenation, the hyphen is placed over the last
letter on the line rather than next to it. If I use Print Preview, the
display is fine. If I export the file as a pdf and print from there, the
printout is fine. The problem only exists when printing directly from
LibreOffice.

Has anyone else noticed this? I hate filing a bug if no one else can confirm
it, but as having old bugs re-appear in later versions is disconcerting, I
thought I should check.

Thanks.

#2

Go ahead and file and then someone from QA will attempt to reproduce. When
you report attach a simple document that shows the issue and make sure to
give easy reproducible steps. Feel free to cc me on the bug and I'll try to
confirm this evening after I leave the office.

Best,
Joel

#3

Hi Joel:

Thanks much for the response.

I decided this morning to take a little time and reproduce the "hyphen" problem I discussed step-by-step so that I could file a usable bug report.

Here's how things went, and why I've decided to abandon that quest.

I started LibreOffice in the normal manner (i.e. clicking the icon). Before I had made any selection, a notification titled "Updates for extensions available; Click the icon for more information" appeared in the upper right corner. Clicking this displayed the "Extension Update" dialog box.

In my particular case, it spends a few seconds and then lists one update: [o] LanguageTool. Open source language checker Version 2.6.

I use this, and have kept it updated for some time, so I clicked on "Release Notes" and it opened my browser and I could see what changes had been made.

So, naturally, I clicked on the "Install" button. This immediately showed a completed progress bar at the top of the dialog box. In the "Result" panel, nothing was shown, and the [OK] button remained inactive (greyed out) for longer than I thought normal, with no messages suggesting why, or what it was doing.

Consulting the help provided the suggestion that some extensions require root access, so I closed LibreOffice (still obviously not having gotten very far with duplicating the "hyphen" problem), executed "sudo libreoffice4.3" from the command line and got the exact same behavior. The [OK] button never (well, at least as long as it took me to eat breakfast) became active and no error messages or other informative text ever appeared. I realize that 4.3, although out of beta, is not considered "stable" but a couple 4.2 bugs in the repository version of LibreOffice affect me particularly - a long story but not relevant here).

Running LibreOffice from the command line, however, turned out to be a BIG HUGE MISTAKE, as the next time I attempted to run LibrOffice from the GUI, I encountered "Welcome to LibreOffice - Use the sidebar to open or create a file." All references to previously used files were gone. All UI preferences were gone, etc. etc. This is beyond annoying, of course, and I wasted another twenty minutes or so putting things back to the way I want them, but I suppose that's the price one pays for free software.

At any rate, still attempting to pop things off the stack in the order I had put them there, I manually downloaded the Language extension and installed it from the extension manager, so at least that's out of the way (although I haven't used it yet, so who knows?). I then proceeded to reproduce the "hyphen" bug. It's there, and it's consistent, and it doesn't seem to be font dependent (at least with the few I tried). Then I noticed the clock!

My point is that, in attempting to document one bug, I ran into another. So now maybe I need to document two bugs. And then I remembered all the hassles the last time I submitted a bug. No. "Not gonna happen" as they say.

This is all fun, of course, but sadly I'm living in an alternate universe (some call it "the real world") and realize that I've already spent more than an hour and a helf doing this stuff and need to get back to actually USING the software rather than particpating in the debugging process. No offense, but if you or any other developers can make use of any of these comments, be my guest.

Again, thanks for the response.

Frank

#4

Hi :slight_smile:
I think you'd be amazed how much easier it is to report a 2nd bug.

The first time there is stuff such as registering on the bug-tracker
website and a bit of faffing around plus the whole idea is a bit unfamiliar
and there are unexpected things to distract you. The 2nd time you don't
need to register and you realise that you can ignore most of the
faff&distractions.

I must admit i've never had a problem with hyphenations except in MS
Publisher. Similarly with most of the problems. Also i find i don't need
any Extensions. It might help if we knew which OS you are using (Win8, Xp,
Ubuntu, Mac or whatever else) and also which version of LO.
Apols and regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#5

Hi Tom:

I thought the "I recently installed Version: 4.3.0.3 Build ID:
08ebe52789a201dd7d38ef653ef7a48925e7f9f7 on 64 bit Ubuntu 14.04" covered
that. I thought I was just responding to Joel, and that was in the original
post, so assumed he knew that.

Regards, Frank

#6

Just for what it's worth, using LibreOffice 4.3.0.2 Build ID
14ed55896fdfcb93ff437b85c4f3e1923d2b1409 under Linux Mint 17 (32 bit) I
cannot replicate the problem.

Graham

#7

Hi :slight_smile:
Sorry, i hadn't noticed the version number or OS because i hadn't seen
earlier posts in the thread. Also the message i was responding to seemed
to be from a different person, perhaps an alternate email address.

Anyway, it looks like the problem is fixed for the new branch so now it's
just up to you to decide whether to stick with the version you are familiar
with or risk being an "early adopter" so that you get to play with newer
toys, better compatibility with MS formats and others and also have more
notice taken of any bug-reports you do post.
Apols and regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#8

Hi :slight_smile:
Blimey so both you guys are running the same version on the same OS? The
Linux version is the same for each different distro. There's even only
about 2-3 different ways it's packaged (rpm and deb and errr). Mint and
Ubuntu both use deb, obviously, as they are both Debian family (err, that's
where the "obviously" bit comes in).

Ubuntu package maintainers sometimes 'have to' do weird tweaks but i
suspect that both Frank and Graham are using one from the website rather
than one tweaked for the repos. If anything Frank has a slightly MORE
recent version in that the 4th digit is higher (i never normally notice the
4th one).

I'm not sure how bug-patches get put in more than 1 release at a time.
Isn't it something like that the patch is put in Git as a new sub-branch
and that sub-branch then gets tested against each of the branches?? I've
no idea what i just said there but Git is very clever.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#9

Hi,

I've just installed 4.3.0.4 from the website (32 bit running under Linux
Mint 17) and the hyphen prints after the letter, as it should, and not
above. (If it makes any difference my printer is a Canon MP240.) What I
do find a tad strange though is that there is a noticeable gap of about 1mm
between the letter and the hyphen (using an 11pt font), which really should
not be there. I printed the same text from version 4.2.5.2 with the same
result. Is there a setting somewhere which sets the spacing between the
hyphen and the letter? I could not find anything on this in the help file,
but as yet have not looked elsewhere. Looking through my library (I have
books from, amongst other countries, UK, US, France, Germany, Italy and
Slovakia) I would deduce that it is standard practice to have virtually no
gap between the hyphen and the preceding letter. Personally this does not
worry me as I do not usually use hyphenation, but I guess it might upset
purists.

Graham

#10

Hi Graham:

Yes - I too always download from the website as Ubuntu's repository usually
contains older, supposedly more stable versions of software. In the case of
LibreOffice, I chose to use a more recent build (4.3 branch) as it has fixes
for a couple bugs that directly affect my work). I use the 64 bit version,
though, so there may be some difference there.

As for the hyphen, my belief (based on using publishing and word processing
software for more than thirty years) is that the hyphen itself should be
acquired from the particular font in use, and it should look and act as if
you had typed it manually, using the same exact spacing.

If the text is "ragged right" i.e. unjustified, you should not see any
difference between a hyphen you typed yourself and an automatic hyphenation.
If the text is right justified, the hyphen's spacing should be "stretched
out" along with all the other characters in the line to make it reach the
right margin, but ignoring/removing the character's own right-hand spacing
for the last character (in this case, the hyphen). And I agree with you that
one would expect no additional spacing between the last "real" character and
the hyphen.

It's interesting to me that you have extraneous spacing BEFORE the hyphen
while, in my case, the hyphen overlays the final non-hyphen character (which
now that I look more closely, seems like it has not had its right edge
spacing removed, giving the appearance that it is only overlapping the right
half of the final character.)

In my case, the actual printed output is fine, as is the output in any pdf
export I make from LibreOffice Writer, so the problem would seem to be
related only to the display. You seem to be suggesting that your additional
spacing is on the printed output. Is that the case? If so, does it match the
Print Preview display?

TomD made a comment that this behavior has been fixed in a "newer branch,"
but I haven't figured out what that means.

So I guess I'm just stuck with WYSIAWYG instead of WHYSIWYG for a while (the
"A" is for "almost").

Have a great weekend...

#11

Hi :slight_smile:
I was wrong about it being fixed in a newer branch. I saw Graham's
response about it working fine in his and figured 2+2=6. I didn't realise
that Frank was already using the newer branch.
Apols and regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#12

The quirk arises if I print and I have also sussed out that if I create a
PDF using "Export directly as PDF" the same thing happens, i.e. a small gap
appears between the letter and the hyphen. (On Print Preview the hyphens
are where they should be.) I had a look at what happens when I insert a
hyphen manually. On the PDF the manually inserted hyphen was where I'd
expect it to be, i.e. bang up against the character, so the gap seems only
to creep in when the hyphens are inserted automatically.

As I said in my previous email, I don't usually use automatic hyphenating
so my digging around is purely out of curiosity.

Graham