Margin problems after saving in Writer - Help!

mishmish · Red Pill Joined: Oct 01, 2009 Posts: 9

This problem started occurring recently when using NeoOffice 2.2.14. I was hoping to remedy the problem by donating and upgrading to 3.0.1. Alas, the upgrade suffers from the same quirk.

The symptoms seem to be as follows:

When typing in Arabic, from right to left, everything works as normal. Punctuation, such as periods, commas, question marks, and exclamation points seem to work just fine. But inserting any other special characters, such as brackets, braces, or quotation marks, causes the current line to jump outside of the set margin. At first, the text starts disappearing into the margin as you insert these special characters. Then, once you save your document, the text magically reappears, but outside of the margin. The typed text cannot be justified back into the margins unless these offending characters are removed.

These special characters are crucial to my current work, as they are in any language, and I'm hoping that someone can shed some light on this problem. I have noted that the problem does not occur when typing in English, from right to left or left to right.

Please help! Thanks in advance! Very Happy

pluby · The Architect Joined: Jun 16, 2003 Posts: 11949

I am having trouble reproducing this problem but I am only able to randomly type a bunch of Arabic characters and then, after swiching back to an English keyboard, inserting brackets in random places in my few lines of Arabic text.

This makes me think that one or more paragraph formatting settings are triggering this behavior so can you attach a sample document using the steps listed in this post and tell us where I should insert brackets or other English punctuation to trigger the problem?

Patrick

mishmish · Red Pill Joined: Oct 01, 2009 Posts: 9

Thanks for listening, Patrick. As per your request, I've attached a sample. Some things to consider when trying to reproduce the problem on your own-- the text must be redirected from RtL as well as being right-aligned. And yes, using brackets requires going back into English-- but try braces or quotes, which are available on the Arabic keyboard, and you'll get the same problem. Also, keep in mind that the problem doesn't rear its ugly head until after I save.

Note-- as far as where to put the punctuation, use it as you would in English-- type some characters, insert your braces or quotes, type more characters, insert close brace/quote. Then save.

Many thanks again. NeoOffice is a great program for typing in Arabic-- I use it daily and am crossing my fingers you can figure this out.

James3359 · Posted: Fri Oct 02, 2009 4:42 am Post subject:

Thank you for posting a sample document to illustrate your problem.

I opened the document on my machine (iBook 1.33 GHz 512 MB PowerPC G4, OS X 10.4.11 running 3.0.1 Early Access Patch 1) and I can't see any problems with the text layout. I am attaching a screenshot of what I see.

I have tried adding brackets before and after the second line of Arabic text, and then braces as an alternative. I have tried switiching to Arabic input typing some randon Arabic text and then switiching back to insert braces or brackets - but I still can't generate the problem you describe.

This is just a hunch, but I wonder if what you have got is simply a display issue. I notice that your document is set display at 111%. I have experienced the situation sometimes where unusual zoom sizes don't work very well and look odd on screen. I've got a couple of suggestions to test this theory. The easiest is just to set your zoom to 100% - does this cure the problem for you? What happens if you select File::Print and click the Preview button - does the preview page look OK? What happens if you go on to print it?

Of course it is possible I'm on the wrong track and there is some other technical issue which I'm not seeing, but these easy steps might help to eliminate some possibilities.

mishmish · Red Pill Joined: Oct 01, 2009 Posts: 9

I have to say, I almost had a heart attack when I saw it came out just fine on your end. But I did as you suggested-- changed the zoom to 100%-- and had the same problem. I checked it on print preview (which I had done before I ever posted to make sure I wasn't being silly) and it still showed it as off. I even printed it out, just to see-- but no change. I didn't even have to save it this time before the text started moving. =(

I've attached the screen shots of what I got in both places. I am on a MacBook Pro 2.6 GHz 4GB Intel Core 2 Duo, Mac OSX 10.6.1 running 3.0.1 Early Access Patch 1.

Could this be a Snow Leopard thing? This was never a problem before...

[I've taken the liberty of editing this post to include a scaled down screen shot as the horizontal scrolling was doing my head in! Shocked

James3359]

James3359 · Posted: Fri Oct 02, 2009 5:22 am Post subject:

Interesting that the same document looks different on your machine and on mine. It might be a Snow Leopard thing, as I am aware that there are font issues with Snow Leopard.

It looks as though we might need to wait until California has had a chance to get breakfast! Very Happy

pluby · The Architect Joined: Jun 16, 2003 Posts: 11949

narf · The Anomaly Joined: Jan 21, 2007 Posts: 1075

mishmish · Red Pill Joined: Oct 01, 2009 Posts: 9

Brilliant! I wish I had thought of the font workaround!!

Thanks for the help, though, really. I await the test patch with bated breath.

pluby · The Architect Joined: Jun 16, 2003 Posts: 11949

I think that I have fixed this bug. Can you install the following test patch and tell us if my fix works for you?:

Intel:
http://joe.neooffice.org/test/NeoOffice-3.0.1_Early_Access-Patch-1-Test-4-Intel.dmg
http://joe.neooffice.org/test/NeoOffice-2.2.6_Early_Access-Patch-1-Test-4-Intel.dmg

PowerPC:
http://joe.neooffice.org/test/NeoOffice-3.0.1_Early_Access-Patch-1-Test-4-PowerPC.dmg
http://joe.neooffice.org/test/NeoOffice-2.2.6_Early_Access-Patch-1-Test-4-PowerPC.dmg

Patrick

mishmish · Red Pill Joined: Oct 01, 2009 Posts: 9

THANK YOU! It worked like a charm. Quotes, brackets, braces-- and not a single margin violation.

Seriously, I really appreciate all the help you've given me over the last couple of days. And I'm uber-relieved to have everything working smoothly again. You guys rock!

narf · The Anomaly Joined: Jan 21, 2007 Posts: 1075

FYI. The fix is included in NeoOffice 3.0.1 Early Access Patch 2. You can download the patch from the following URL:

http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/earlyaccesspatch.php

Also, The fix is included in NeoOffice 2.2.6 Early Access Patch 2. You can download that patch from the following URL:

http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/earlyaccesspatch.php

If you are not a member of the NeoOffice 3.0.1 Early Access Program, the fix will be available in the NeoOffice 3.0.1 release currently scheduled for 27 October 2009.