Bug 149630 - Can't search for single quote character (hex 27)
Summary: Can't search for single quote character (hex 27)
Status: ASSIGNED
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Writer (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
7.3.2.2 release
Hardware: x86-64 (AMD64) Linux (All)
: medium normal
Assignee: László Németh
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords: bisected, regression
: 140031 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks: Find-Search
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2022-06-20 05:05 UTC by Luke Kendall
Modified: 2023-12-28 05:06 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
Doc with apostrophe and single quote (9.21 KB, application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text)
2022-06-21 02:55 UTC, Michael Warner
Details

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Description Luke Kendall 2022-06-20 05:05:22 UTC
You can no longer search for an ascii single quote character: Writer will find the apostrophe ('smart' single close quote) character as well.

I tried to find places where I had a single quote character but couldn't (from pasting in text), and couldn't. I had to use OnlyOffice to find them. (Since there were just three, compared to 3,955 'single close quote' characters.)

Searching for " (hex 22) works, as distinct from (smart) typographical close double quote.

I used to be able to search for this in earlier versions of Writer.
Comment 1 Mike Kaganski 2022-06-20 13:29:22 UTC
(I didn't check myself, but pretty sure that my comment quoted below is relevant).

From https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/c/core/+/105717:

> This looks very wrong itself. It simply disallows the strict search-and-replace
> function. The matching of typographical apostrophe with ASCII one fits very much
> with diacritic-insensitive mode, so it should had been only done in that case.

So - most likely regression after commit d40f2d02df26e216f367b5da3f9546b73f250469
  Author László Németh <nemeth@numbertext.org>
  Date   Thu Nov 12 11:33:05 2020 +0100
    tdf#117643 Writer: fix apostrophe search regression
Comment 2 Michael Warner 2022-06-21 02:55:29 UTC
Created attachment 180856 [details]
Doc with apostrophe and single quote
Comment 3 Michael Warner 2022-06-21 02:57:28 UTC
I confirm this with:
Version: 7.3.1.3 / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: a69ca51ded25f3eefd52d7bf9a5fad8c90b87951
CPU threads: 10; OS: Mac OS X 12.3.1; UI render: default; VCL: osx
Locale: en-US (en_US.UTF-8); UI: en-US
Calc: threaded

Searching for apostrophe finds both the apostrophe and the closing single quote. This occurs regardless of whether the diacritic-sensitive option is checked.
Comment 4 Mike Kaganski 2022-06-21 07:02:25 UTC
As László noted in reply to my quoted note, the different kinds of apostrophes are not diacritics. And also regular expressions do search literally.

Note that search for ' in e.g. Chrome highlights all similar symbols.

Two possible options that I see:
1. Introduce a new "similar symbols" checkbox (which would e.g. group ’′׳‎᾿◌́◌́ˈꞌ‏‘’‚‏), make it default.
2. Introduce the same option under existing "Similarity search" option (again, make it default).
Comment 5 V Stuart Foote 2022-06-21 10:57:56 UTC
For OP, any reason you don't use the Find & Replace dialog's 'Other options' -> 'Regular expressions' search for "\u0027", or octal "\0047". 

Both provided by ICU libs and that seem functional and suited to specific ask? 

An additional transliteration mode that László and Mike K. mention in the gerrit link aside, the search dialog still works.
Comment 6 Mike Kaganski 2022-06-21 11:46:43 UTC
(In reply to V Stuart Foote from comment #5)

Note that with regular expressions activated, search for ' also works literally.
Comment 7 Mike Kaganski 2022-06-23 06:51:41 UTC
See also: https://ask.libreoffice.org/t/search-only-for-apostrophe/78870
Comment 8 Michael Warner 2022-06-24 18:08:18 UTC
(In reply to V Stuart Foote from comment #5)
> For OP, any reason you don't use the Find & Replace dialog's 'Other options'
> -> 'Regular expressions' search for "\u0027", or octal "\0047". 
> 
> Both provided by ICU libs and that seem functional and suited to specific
> ask? 

That may be an option for this specific person's particular task, but expecting this to be the go-to solution for the average user is not reasonable, in my opinion. I feel confident in saying that it is a small subset of LO users who know what regular expressions are or would ever think to search for a character using a hex code. This seems to me like more of a workaround than an expected use case for what should be the simple task of finding a specific character (and only that character).  

> 
> An additional transliteration mode that László and Mike K. mention in the
> gerrit link aside, the search dialog still works.

Even if you don't consider this to be a bug, the enhancement proposals Mike K. provides in Comment 4 seem like good usability improvements to me.
Comment 9 LeroyG 2022-06-26 14:48:41 UTC
Reproducible with:
Version: 7.4.0.0.alpha1 (x86) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: b871abad383583f02eb49c7e49aeae01f6941072
CPU threads: 4; OS: Windows 6.1 Service Pack 1 Build 7601; UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win
Locale: es-MX (es_MX); UI: es-ES
Calc: threaded
Comment 10 Sophie Sipasseuth 2023-08-17 08:33:12 UTC
Firstly, I added two double-quote characters in the document.
Then, when I tried to search for only one single quote character, the bug wasn't present.
When I tried to search for two single quote characters, the bug was present.
When I tried to search for only one double quote character, the bug was present.
When I tried to search for two double-quote characters, the bug was present.

Version: 7.1.0.0.alpha1+ (x64)
Build ID: 738bcf5e9a8c443d60c29c3a8068e8c16c72638a
CPU threads: 4; OS: Windows 10.0 Build 19045; UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win
Locale: fr-FR (fr_FR); UI: en-US
Calc: CL

Version: 7.2.0.0.alpha1+ (x64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: ff2ba77f22b2e96f96f5537aec1705956b47583d
CPU threads: 4; OS: Windows 10.0 Build 19045; UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win
Locale: fr-FR (fr_FR); UI: en-US
Calc: CL

Version: 7.2.8.0.0+ (x64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: ffa09959edd087794b1f2fe6b9b6faac484ef74b
CPU threads: 4; OS: Windows 10.0 Build 19045; UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win
Locale: fr-FR (fr_FR); UI: en-US
Calc: CL

Version: 7.3.0.0.alpha1+ (x64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 229123ccc6f90ebf66b3e659bebbd53f8a9bdd3a
CPU threads: 4; OS: Windows 10.0 Build 19045; UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win
Locale: fr-FR (fr_FR); UI: en-US
Calc: CL

Version: 7.3.8.0.0+ (x64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: e1ad83ddb2f39419fb5d7c69eba51e2b9f49c788
CPU threads: 4; OS: Windows 10.0 Build 19045; UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win
Locale: fr-FR (fr_FR); UI: en-US
Calc: CL

Version: 7.4.0.0.alpha1+ (x64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: c94961c6869c34b3874d21cfaa5ec1488609acfe
CPU threads: 4; OS: Windows 10.0 Build 19045; UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win
Locale: fr-FR (fr_FR); UI: en-US
Calc: CL

Version: 7.4.8.0.0+ (x64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: f8ba7c6f77497e2dc7bfef8378511e2074ce01f9
CPU threads: 4; OS: Windows 10.0 Build 19045; UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win
Locale: fr-FR (fr_FR); UI: en-US
Calc: CL

Version: 7.5.0.1.0+ (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: ced8585bcb92aa58ca3e24197ff38fb82cc8a703
CPU threads: 4; OS: Windows 10.0 Build 19045; UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win
Locale: fr-FR (fr_FR); UI: en-US
Calc: CL threaded

Version: 7.6.0.0.beta1+ (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 1b5cee822e0bc15ddbdfc86926678ca35ab3e082
CPU threads: 4; OS: Windows 10.0 Build 19045; UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win
Locale: fr-FR (fr_FR); UI: en-US
Calc: CL threaded

Version: 24.2.0.0.alpha0+ (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 2b0b4ddc8bd8fdd4cd689300620fe4621d7533b7
CPU threads: 4; OS: Windows 10.0 Build 19045; UI render: default; VCL: win
Locale: fr-FR (fr_FR); UI: fr-FR
Calc: CL threaded
Comment 11 Sophie Sipasseuth 2023-08-17 08:42:33 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 12 Sophie Sipasseuth 2023-08-17 09:04:15 UTC
No reproduction of bug for apostrophes because it is the same key on the keyboard as a single quote character.
Comment 13 Sophie Sipasseuth 2023-08-17 09:46:09 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 14 Mike Kaganski 2023-08-17 10:20:28 UTC
(In reply to Sophie Sipasseuth from comment #13)

Still reproducible on Windows, using both

Version: 7.6.0.3 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 69edd8b8ebc41d00b4de3915dc82f8f0fc3b6265
CPU threads: 12; OS: Windows 10.0 Build 19045; UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win
Locale: ru-RU (ru_RU); UI: en-US
Calc: CL threaded

and

Version: 24.2.0.0.alpha0+ (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: ee52f20ec727e5c296cc5d8f4c2a25f1414eb0fe
CPU threads: 12; OS: Windows 10.0 Build 19045; UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win
Locale: en-US (ru_RU); UI: en-US
Calc: CL threaded

exactly the same way.

Paste the text

' ’

which contains both the normal "APOSTROPHE" (U+0027) and "RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK" U+2019. Then open Find & Replace dialog, *make sure that regular expressions are unchecked*, and press [Find All].
Comment 15 bintoro 2023-12-27 16:53:56 UTC
*** Bug 140031 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 16 LummoxJR 2023-12-28 05:06:36 UTC
This has been going on way too long. Can we get this fixed already?

I rely on the ability to search for straight apostrophes and quotes specifically. Not being able to search this without very specific regular expressions is a mess.