Create round borders/circles around numbering numbers?

If I modify the character style being used using the Styles & Formatting menu there is a “borders” tab, but it only creates square borders.

Thanks.

There are a couple of fonts that offer “numbers in circles” through OpenType substitutions. For example, with Junicode you can get any number from 0 to 20 inside a circle (and from 1 to 9 inside a double circle) using the +dlig feature and Sukhumala uses +nalt for a similar effect

As you can see you cannot compose arbitrary numbers and you are limited to what the font provides.


To learn more about how to use OpenType features in Writer, you can check my book about Writer.

@RGB-es: from your description, it looks like OpenType only offsets the number glyphs within the Unicode set, i.e. my answer finally is equivalent to yours, without the :dlig or :nalt fuss, though mine needs to code explicitly the Unicode glyph. Given this equivalence, does your solution suffer the same shortcoming as mine in numbering list context?

Or, since you must write [ (a number) ], can you define the brackets as before and after separators and get automatically the circled number?

@ajlittoz yes, setting a character style that uses Junicode:dlig as font name and setting the list to have the square brackets as separators before and after is enough. You’ll not see the effect in the list setting preview, but in the document it will work without problems (just tried).

@RGB-es: thanks, great trick! +1

What happens if you overflow the circled or double circled range? Can you try a double circled numbered list with 12 items?

@ajlittoz when you overflow, you just get those extra numbers between square brackets :frowning:

Provided you don’t need more than 20 numbers, you can use the circled Unicode characters starting at U+2460:

  • U+2460 to U+2473 CIRCLED NUMBER x
  • U+24F5 to U+24FE DOUBLE CIRCLED NUMBER x (only ten of those)

This works independently of OpenType; Of course, the glyphs must be included with the font. Most fonts pretending to be Unicode have them.

I haven’t checked how it can be used in auto-numbered lists but I fear it will not give the expected result (i.e. it will behave like a bulleted list with custom bullet per level). Probably good only for manually numbered lists.