Punctuation moves cursor to start of line

[dd-b]

When entering or editing in a text box, Latin alphabet letters appear where I expect and the cursor advances, but typing a punctuation character suddenly takes me to the start of the line. Also the arrow keys seem to work backwards.

The problem seems to exist in certain of my presentations, and does not instantly appear when I create a new presentation. However, if I copy a slide over, the problem comes with it.

This smells like a text direction confusion to me. However, I do not have CTL or “Asian languages” selected in the options, and I have never worked in such languages in the past. Also the keyboard shortcuts I’ve found which claim to switch directions (CTL-SHIFT-A in particular) do nothing. No trackpad (accidental trackpad activation is one popular way to get weird random cursor jumps).

So, any ideas, any suggestions?

Oh, Windows 10, Libreoffice V5.1.6.2

[dd-b]

Okay, I poked this with a stick long enough to figure it out.

The document (presentation) somehow had text direction confusions. The running instance of Impress had CTL and Asian languages off.

Turns out this combination hides the tools you need to fix the underlying text direction confusions!

When I turned CTL and Asian languages back on, I got the text direction icons in the character properties when I was in a paragraph with problems, and clicking the left (for left-to-right) text direction icon then fixed the problem. But I couldn’t do this while CTL and Asian languages were off, had to temporarily turn them on to fix this.

Also, the keyboard shortcuts I read about still don’t work. Haven’t investigated this at all, haven’t even verified that the shortcuts mentioned in external articles are correct for the version I’m running (which is the most likely answer, I feel).