Description: When the paragraph is right-to-left, and trying to enter english (left-to-right) text that includes a combination of digits-space-letters-space-digits the digits are not placed correctly. See "Steps to reproduce" for an example Steps to Reproduce: 1. start with a blank line, with a r-t-l paragraph aligned to the right 2. switch to english 3. try entering the text "15 U.S.C. 80b1" 4. the "15" is treated as r-t-l and not placed in the proper place Actual Results: "U.S.C 80b1 15" with the font of "15" being the r-t-l font Expected Results: "15 U.S.C. 80b1" Reproducible: Always User Profile Reset: No Additional Info: Version: 7.2.1.2 / LibreOffice Community Build ID: 20(Build:2) CPU threads: 4; OS: Linux 5.4; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3 Locale: he-IL (en_IL); UI: en-US Ubuntu package version: 1:7.2.1-0ubuntu0.20.04.1~lo1 Calc: threaded
Confirm with Version 4.1.0.0.alpha0+ (Build ID: efca6f15609322f62a35619619a6d5fe5c9bd5a) and Version: 7.4.0.0.alpha0+ / LibreOffice Community Build ID: 8942956e05f2208ffb666a2118f5db092c30ce6a CPU threads: 4; OS: Linux 5.11; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3 Locale: cs-CZ (cs_CZ.UTF-8); UI: en-US Calc: threaded I know nothing about RTL, leaving Unconfirmed status.
Something similar is this bug 89010
The digits have “weak” LTR direction property, so if the paragraph direction is RTL they get a RTL word order if not preceded by LTR text, this is all expected. It follows that if the paragraph direction is RTL then the digits belong to RTL text and thus take so-called complex font. If one want to override this, “Insert → Formatting Mark → Left-to-right mark” before the digits should do the trick.
the previous comment is correct, but.... it is correct that using the "intuitive" menu sequence: "Insert->Formatting Mark->Left-To-Right Mark" renders the text as expected however, I believe that this should not be the default behavior, and users should not have to resort to using invisible formatting marks whenever they want to cite an international (latin text and digits) reference while writing in a r-t-l language 1. because it is not intuitive, and not what users expect 2. as an expert "witness" to back my intuition on default behavior - MS Word renders the text in my example correctly without any "formatting marks". The fact that the users enters a sequence of digits and latin letters means that the sequence should be formatted as a left-to-right sequence within the right-to-left paragraph
(In reply to h.rosemarin from comment #4) > the previous comment is correct, but.... > it is correct that using the "intuitive" menu sequence: "Insert->Formatting > Mark->Left-To-Right Mark" renders the text as expected > however, I believe that this should not be the default behavior, and users > should not have to resort to using invisible formatting marks whenever they > want to cite an international (latin text and digits) reference while > writing in a r-t-l language > 1. because it is not intuitive, and not what users expect > 2. as an expert "witness" to back my intuition on default behavior - MS Word > renders the text in my example correctly without any "formatting marks". The > fact that the users enters a sequence of digits and latin letters means that > the sequence should be formatted as a left-to-right sequence within the > right-to-left paragraph I don't know what MS Word is doing nor I can test it to confirm, but either it is inserting the formatting marks automatically based on some heuristic (and I think we already have open issues requisting such behavior) or implements q non-standard bidi algorithm which I don't think some thing we want to support. FWIW, you will get the same digit order thing in essentially any application (other than MS Office, based on your observation). The font switch is unique to office suits and we probably can improve it, but I feel that the digit order is the bigger issue here.