When we select a font for a selected text, we would like to see first how the text would look with that font. This way, we wouldn't have to select each font manually, one by one, until we find a cool one. At the same time we slide from font to font on the font list, the selected text could appear formatted with the font over which the mouse is hovering. I guess this is called the live preview, and I guess I saw it happening once, but never again. Was it removed? That feature was useful.
Have functional implementation of that now, with a text selection made using context menu's Character dialog--or via Format -> Character launch of the dialog--a preview is rendered into the box in the dialog (not on the document canvas). The trigger to refresh the preview of the selection is a _mouse click_ on a font from the list. Conceivable to make the selection preview mouse over while scrolling the font list in the dialog--but if implemented that could not be the default behavior for its obvious performance impact.
This already works in Calc, but not in the other components. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 37048 ***