How to set the default Asian font?

[librebird]

I am making a document that is in both English and Sinhala, even in the same sentence. When I switch from typing in English to Sinhala, the Sinhala letters (without my doing anything) are changed to the font Lucida Sans. I know for sure that Lucida Sans does not contain any Sinhala glyphs, so LO must still be doing some substitution.

But my goal is to set the default Sinhala font to “Noto Sans Sinhala”. How can I do that?

I have turned on Asian fonts:

I selected “Multiple” because Sinhala is not listed. Sinhala works just fine in LO and did before I turned these settings on.

And I have set them all to Noto Sans Sinhala:

But still when I start typing Sinhala, still the font setting changes to Lucida Sans. I have restarted and even tried in a new document.

I can manually apply Noto Sans Sinhala to text no problem. So it’s not an issue with the font.

What should I be doing?

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Windows 11
Version: 25.2.4.3 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 33e196637044ead23f5c3226cde09b47731f7e27
CPU threads: 16; OS: Windows 11 X86_64 (10.0 build 26100); UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win
Locale: en-US (en_US); UI: en-US
Calc: threaded

[ajlittoz]

This is not an issue with the font but with your formatting.

There are to points to watch for:

• setting the language for text
  Since you’re under W$, just switching keyboard layout should be sufficient. Otherwise, force language with Format>Character, Font tab. There, just select from the Language drop-down menu and DON’T DO ANYTHING ELSE (because direct formatting alway takes precedence over styling and it would hide style effects).
• avoiding direct formatting (DF)
  The setting you have configured in Tools>Options modify Default Paragraph Style (and some others). This cascades down to other styles because they are derived from Default Paragraph Style unless there is an override along the inheritance chain. But, DF always overrides styles. Therefore, if you ever forced Lucida Sans, this will prevail.

Writing a multi-lingual document is rather tricky and DF is has even more disastrous effects than in mono-lingual ordinary documents. Therefore I recommend a very strict styling approach with paragraph and character styles. Note that character styles don’t exist in Word and are generally neglected by users.

For a better analysis, attach a sample file so that I can give you adequate advice.

[librebird]

@ajlittoz

just select from the Language drop-down menu

Unfortunately Sinhala is not there.

But I figured it out. I had set Basic Fonts (Asian) to Noto Sans Sinhala but not Basic Fonts (CTL).

Thanks so much for your response!