In a spreadsheet using version 7.4.7.2 I had arial 10 font and a seven digit number like 1234567 fit into a column width of 0.57" after upgrading to version 25.2.3.2 the same numbers no longer fit in the columns.
arial wasn’t installed in 7.4.7.2 and localc used another font to substitute.
Nor is it installed in 25.2.3.2 so again localc is substituring but not with the same font.
How do I determine which font is being used for the substitution?
Thanks,
Mike
For Arial, the substitution is hardcoded: it’s Liberation Sans.
Otherwise, there is a programmatic way.
This is likely a bug.
Please upload a fragment of this file that demonstrates the problem.
Here is your demo.
Arial10.ods (25.9 KB)
I’ll be curious what you see.
I found that Liberation fonts weren’t loaded by default in Trixie but installing them didn’t seem to make the difference.
Cheers,
Mike
No relation to Arial (or font substitution in general). I use 25.8.3.1 on Windows, with Arial of course, and I see that at 100%, the situation that you describe happens. It indeed depends on the zoom level.
I had a hard time finding a Linux instance where the cell contents of your file were fully visible.
Taking @mikekaganski 's comment into account, I replaced the Arial font with Liberation Sans. The difference in cell visibility between Linux and Windows remains.
Version: 25.2.6.2 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 729c5bfe710f5eb71ed3bbde9e06a6065e9c6c5d
CPU threads: 6; OS: Windows 10 X86_64 (10.0 build 19045); UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win
Locale: ru-RU (ru_RU); UI: en-US
Calc: CL threaded
Version: 7.3.7.2 / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 30(Build:2)
CPU threads: 4; OS: Linux 6.8; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3
Locale: en-US (en_US.UTF-8); UI: en-US
Ubuntu package version: 1:7.3.7-0ubuntu0.22.04.10
Calc: threaded
The version 7.4.7.2 is on a RaspberryPI running RPI’s version of Debian bookworm, the version 25.2.3.2 is running under RPI’s version of Debian trixie.
The zoom is the same in both cases yet they don’t display the same.
I’ll compare the font files after I get back to trixie. At the moment I’m again on bookworm due to having broken trixie’s ability to get to the web while trying to replace network-manager with ipupdown access.
I’ll keep exploring because the stocks.ods file where this is really a problem has many sheets of many years data where many cells aren’t readable without changing column width.
Thanks for the feedback.
Mike
Here’s your file, with the Arial font replaced with the native Liberation Sans font. The cell contents of this file are visible in the Linux version of LO (mentioned in my previous message) but not in the Windows version mentioned above.
LS10.ods (43.5 KB)
@fpy , of the several available to me LO configurations for Linux, I have only found one in which the numbers are fully visible.
not expert in rendering, but the equation is to fit “1234567” in 10pt into 1.45 cm …
the minimum I get is 1.52cm (and even then I get “1+E06” with 80% zoom 
)
1.55cm seems stable enough.
I’m not surprised that you see the numbers in your version 7… localc.
My problem is that in version 25.2.3.2 those numbers don’t fit in that column width even using Liberation Sans.
So what has changed?
Cheers,
Mike
In exploring this problem I don’t think an answer to the question is within my abilities.
I copied the font files used in the bookworm system to the trixie system. As you can see there is no comparison to a person not well versed in fonts.
I moved the trixie fonts to /root/tmp/ replacing them with the bookworm version then relaunched localc hoping to see the numbers displayed instead of ‘###’, no joy.
-rw-r–r-- 1 mike mike 139512 Feb 22 2020 LiberationSans-Regular.ttf
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 410820 Jul 13 2023 LiberationSans-Regular.ttf
Unfortunately there is fonts-conf between localc and the font itself so who is to blame for the problem?
fonts-conf (5) - Font configuration files
/etc/fonts/fonts.conf
/usr/share/xml/fontconfig
/usr/share/fontconfig
I haven’t an answer to that question.
I did find that ‘Liberation Serif’ will fit in the column and show the all digits it even leaves room for another ‘1’ so I know that is not what was being used under bookworm or maybe not since I didn’t try transfering font-conf to trixie. Probably wouldn’t have worked since the libs have changed.
This is frustrating since I’ve been tracking my portfolio since '97 and that is a lot of files and sheets to have to reset the font for.
Well nobody said life should be easy, just interesting.
I don’t see any sense in continuing this thread unless someone comes up with a solution,
I’d like to say thanks to all you guys who offered suggestions.
Bye,
Mike
