Description: Open Libre Office Writer. Open Help -> LibreOffice Help menu (or press F1). Type encoding. Several results are found, including how to save in given encoding or encoding for images. But it is now written how to set encoding for text, neither it's written that it is impossible to change encoding. Steps to Reproduce: 1. Open LibreOffice Writer. 2. Press F1. 3. Find -> "encoding". Actual Results: General ("Submission encoding -> Specifies the type for encoding the data transfer."), Graphics Export Options, About Import and Export Filters. Expected Results: A good text editor must be able to support different encodings. They should be possibly set from menu. If not, how to set a different encoding should be written in the documentation (and in offline installed Help). If this is not supported by the program, good documentation should tell explicitly that to change encoding is not possible for this software. Reproducible: Always User Profile Reset: No Additional Info: Version: 6.1.2.1 Build ID: 6.1.2.1-2.fc29 CPU threads: 4; OS: Linux 4.18; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3; Locale: en-US (en_US.utf8); Calc: group threaded
(In reply to Yaroslav Nikitenko from comment #0) > neither it's written that it is impossible to change encoding. It's incorrect to assume that documentation should contain a list of things that are not possible or required for operation of any software. There's an infinite possible list of such things. If you don't find some information missing about actually existing/required things, then it would be a bug; otherwise it's not. Closing NOTABUG.
> incorrect to assume that documentation should contain a list of things that are not possible or required for operation of any software this is right. However, character encoding is one of the fundamental things in a text editor (because one writes and saves text in that encoding). > then it would be a bug then it would be a feature (documentation) request.
(In reply to Yaroslav Nikitenko from comment #2) > However, character encoding is one of the fundamental things > in a text editor (because one writes and saves text in that encoding). No. Only plain text formats have that "fundamental" property; and the plain text formats are *not* the core of the program; they are not the native file format; they are not recommended to use. The specific properties of *external* file formats are not "fundamental" to Writer *in any way*, and only should be documented as part of respective import/export filter documentation.
FTR: the respective settings of the import/export filter are documented in https://help.libreoffice.org/7.4/en-US/text/shared/00/00000215.html?DbPAR=WRITER, including the mention of the encoding (incorrectly named "character set" there).
Many thanks for the detailed comment! I think I faced the problem with encoding when trying to open a document in another format. Usually a browser would allow to set the encoding, so I tried that with LibreOffice instead. Great that this feature is documented!