Special Character Window

English
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#1

Hi,

  1. When I open the Special Character window after having opened a particular .doc document that was not made using LB (or Word, for that matter), the Special Character window looks very different. The left hand side with all the characters in, is displayed very large and difficult to read.

C:\fakepath\Temp.jpg
C:\fakepath\Temp.jpg1169×982 158 KB

  1. There seems to be big gaps in the character sets. For instance, I know that the n- and m-dash are U+096 and U+097 (hex). However, these are not there.

Any suggestions?

(screenshot display fixed by ajlittoz)

#2

There seems to be big gaps in the character sets

Incomplete fonts have gaps - not a matter of LibreOffice but of the specific font.

#3

Fonts are managed by the OS, not LO. As your OS is secret, it’s not possible to provide further answers.

#4

  1. What happens if you save the .doc as .ods close everything and open the .ods?

  2. Are you sure that is not ASCII code? You want Unicode U+2013 – and U+2014 — (search for dash in Special Character)

#5

U+0096 and U+0097 are C1 (deprecated) control characters START OF GUARDED AREA and END OF GUARDED AREA respectively. If you really mean theses hex codes for dashes, they probably existed in some pre-Unicode character set with 256 positions, aka. “code pages” in older Windows.

Although your screenshot pretends to display Arial, it behaves as if the font doesn’t exist and uses an approximate substitute. This font is quite weird: the selection is for U+0001 and display a tilde for missing character. This is quite an unusual glyph choice for missing character.

#6

OS = Win10

Opening the file in LO and saving in .odt, closing LO and reopening the newly saved file causes the special character chart to appear normal. Any idea why the original file would cause the special character window to be so peculiar (point 1)?

You’re right. The codes I put here are in fact ASCII codes not Unicode. For ease I have previously typed in the ASCII code by ALT+0150, for example, which does work in LO. (For the life of me, I can’t remember why I didn’t on this occasion.) If I wanted to manually type in a code for a character in the Unicode set, how would I do it. ALT+??? doesn’t work.

#7

I don’t know if the SC window is actually displaying Arial, but changing the font in the window to, say, TimesNR, changes the display to that font. It appears, have experimented further, that the tilde might have been a hangover from the previous time I opened the SC window. It looks like I clicked on the tilde character, closed the window and reopened it. The tilde was still there, but the reference was 0001.

#8

(Sorry, this is a side issue. Why can I not enter a new question without getting this old question filled in? When I try entering a new question, this one pops up rather than a blank form. I can’t even ask this as a separate question, as it won’t let me.)

#9

The Alt+0150 is Windows OS doing the conversion and is not transferable to another OS

To convert the Hex number to the character type the code, eg U+2014 then immediately press Alt+X. If there is no confusion arising, then typing 2014 then pressing Alt+X also works

BTW pressing -- in Writer will convert to n-dash thanks to magic of AutoCorrect. Probably in your LO you can press :---: to get an m-dash

#10

Just to finalise this question.

The .doc file is not formed properly.

Save the .doc as .ods close everything and open the .ods. LO has ignored the faulty stuff it cannot interpret and saved a clean version of the file.

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